The Court of Appeal has dismissed S. L.’s appeal against the severity of sentences for eight indecent assaults and one sexual assault, finding the sentences just and appropriate.
The appeal concerned eight concurrent seven-year prison sentences for indecent assaults against complainant “F” and a concurrent sentence of three and a half years for the sexual assault of complainant “E”. The court upheld both. The judgment addresses sentence only; an earlier appeal against the convictions had already been dismissed on 8 May 2020.
A jury convicted S. L. in October 2017 of 21 offences involving three complainants, identified in the judgment as “F”, “M” and “E”. He appealed only the sentences for the eight indecent assaults and the sexual assault. He did not appeal the sentence for an offence involving “M”. All sentences imposed at trial were concurrent.
The court said the assaults against “F” involved genital touching inside her clothing and vaginal penetration, mostly digitally. The offences occurred over a number of years on farm properties owned by the appellant’s or complainants’ families. The court described the repeated assaults as a protracted campaign of serious abuse, committed in breach of trust and causing profound, lasting psychological and emotional damage. “F” had described lasting effects in a victim impact statement.
For the eight indecent assaults, the appellant argued that the sentencing judge’s eight-year headline starting point placed the offending too high on the scale of gravity. The Court of Appeal accepted that an isolated incident of penetrative sexual assault in breach of trust, with a significant age difference, would be mid-range on the historical ten-year scale. But it said the repeated assaults over several years materially aggravated the offending. The starting point, which the court described as 80% along the available scale, was justified. The judge had imposed seven years on each count.
The appellant also challenged the four-year headline starting point for the sexual assault of “E”, as well as the reduction to a three-and-a-half-year sentence. The court said the assault was an isolated incident as to “E”, involving digital penetration of a young teenage girl by a much older person in breach of trust. It found the offence at the high end of the applicable scale and no error in the four-year starting point.
The Court of Appeal noted that the sentencing judge could have imposed consecutive sentences, but instead made all sentences concurrent. It concluded that the sentences for the eight indecent assaults adequately reflected their gravity and dismissed the appeal.