The Court of Appeal has dismissed a Director of Public Prosecutions appeal against a three-year sentence that was suspended in full after J.P. pleaded guilty to five counts involving sexual acts with a child under 15 and two counts of sexual assault.
In its judgment delivered on 15 December 2014, the court said the sentence was lenient but the DPP had not shown that it was unduly lenient. It found no error of principle and left the sentence undisturbed. The appeal was brought under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993.
The offences concerned the daughter of J.P.’s former girlfriend. The court said the child was 13 at the time and J.P. was 23. He was living in her mother’s home, where he was sometimes left alone with the child. The judgment described a history of sexualised contact, including intercourse and oral sex. It recorded that no physical force was used and that the child was a willing participant, while stressing that the sentencing judge had said willingness was neither a defence nor an excuse.
The child later disclosed the acts to her mother. Evidence at sentencing included a victim impact statement describing reduced confidence and self-esteem, difficulty interacting with new people and lasting distress. The court also heard that the family left Ireland for a period and returned to the UK, where they had originally come from, causing upheaval.
The sentencing judge had set three years’ imprisonment as the sentence before mitigation, then suspended it in full. He cited the unusual domestic circumstances, J.P.’s low intellectual ability and difficult family background, his lack of previous or subsequent offending, a positive probation assessment of low reoffending risk, an early guilty plea and cooperation with the investigation. The judge also considered €5,000 offered from J.P.’s own resources to help fund counselling for the child.
The Court of Appeal said custodial sentences would usually be appropriate in such cases, while a non-custodial outcome could be within a trial judge’s discretion in an appropriate case. It considered the circumstances exceptional, noted the time elapsed since the proceedings in the Circuit Court in December 2010, and concluded the sentence remained within the permissible range. The court did not substitute a sentence or otherwise alter the original order.