The Court of Appeal has reduced the effective prison sentence imposed on T.Q. for offences against a victim over whom he held a position of trust as her father.
The court had previously delivered a judgment setting out the background and details of the offences. In this further ruling, Mr Justice Mahon said only that the offending was "extremely serious" and particularly grave.
T.Q. was described as a dominant member of a family whose home was dysfunctional and problematic in a number of respects. The court stressed, however, that those circumstances did not diminish the seriousness of the offences or the importance of his position of trust as the victim's father.
The sentence originally imposed was 14 years' imprisonment with the final 18 months suspended. That left T.Q. facing an effective custodial term of 12 and a half years.
In reconsidering sentence, the Court of Appeal compared the punishment with sentences imposed in other cases of broadly similar seriousness. It concluded that the appropriate effective sentence for offending at this level was in the region of ten to 11 years.
Against that benchmark, the court found the original 12-and-a-half-year effective term too high. Rather than change the 14-year headline sentence, it concluded that the sentencing judge should have suspended a greater portion of it.
The Court of Appeal therefore substituted a sentence of 14 years' imprisonment with the final three years suspended. The practical effect was to reduce the period to be served in custody from 12 and a half years to 11 years.
The supplied ruling is confined to this resentencing decision. It does not repeat the nature, dates or locations of the offences, the victim's age, the conditions attached to the suspended portion or the reasoning contained in the court's earlier judgment.