The Court of Appeal reduced a 78-year-old man’s sentence for a sexual assault from eight and a half years to five years, backdated as directed by the sentencing court. It found the offending was very serious but held that his age and poor health warranted a greater reduction in custody.
The man had pleaded guilty and was convicted at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court in October 2015 on five counts: two sexual assaults, two counts of possessing child pornography and attempted buggery of a person under 17. The appeal concerned the eight-and-a-half-year sentence for the second sexual assault. The other sentences were ordered to run concurrently.
The judgment describes offending against a boy who was about 12 when the first assault occurred in 2000. It says the man brought the boy to a hotel on repeated visits over several years, sexually assaulted him, photographed him and exposed him to pornography. The complainant was 16 during a further incident in 2005. The court said the conduct involved grooming and serious sexual abuse over a number of years.
The sentencing judge had set a headline sentence of 11 and a half years for the appealed count, then reduced it to eight and a half years. The appeal challenged, among other things, the assessment of the offence’s gravity, the weight given to aggravating factors and consideration of mitigating circumstances.
The Court of Appeal placed the offending in the higher end of the gravity scale, though at the lower end of that category. It considered a headline sentence of nine years appropriate, rather than 11 and a half. It also noted that the sentencing judge had recognised the man’s age, poor health and non-Irish nationality, and had discounted the headline sentence by more than 25 per cent.
The appeal court said the man would turn 79 that August, had serious medical conditions and was largely dependent on a wheelchair. It concluded that the sentencing judge had not adequately accounted for the severe difficulties prison caused him. Taking account of the mitigating factors, particularly his age and health, the court imposed a five-year custodial sentence, backdated as directed below. It said that without those particular factors, the net custodial term would likely have been about eight years.