The Court of Appeal reduced the sentence imposed on J. H. for four sexual offences committed when he was 15, setting an 18-month term with the final six months suspended for 12 months on conditions.
J. H. had pleaded guilty and was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 22 July 2016 of two sexual assaults and two rapes. The offences occurred in 2008, when the complainant was 11. The Court of Appeal said the conduct involved repeated incidents and included oral rape. The complainant’s identity is not given in the judgment.
The sentencing judge imposed concurrent terms of six months and 12 months for the sexual assaults, and two years and four years for the rape offences. The sentences were to run from 28 November 2016. The final two years of the four-year sentence were suspended for two years from J. H.’s final release from prison. J. H. appealed those sentences.
The appeal court said the sentencing judge had set an eight-year headline sentence for an adult in “normal circumstances”, reduced to four years to account for J. H.’s youth and lack of maturity. It accepted the eight-year starting assessment but concluded that the four-year headline sentence did not sufficiently reflect that he was a child when the offences occurred.
The court said a sentencing court must assess the offender’s maturity and culpability at the time of the offences. It noted that detention as a last resort under section 143 of the Children Act 2001 applies to sentencing a child, while J. H. was an adult when sentenced. The court nevertheless treated his age at the time of the crimes as relevant to culpability.
The judges described the offences as serious, repeated and calculated, and said they could not reasonably be treated as merely experimental. They also recorded the considerable and continuing impact on the complainant. The judgment noted that J. H. had no previous convictions, made a voluntary statement to gardaí in 2013, admitted wrongdoing, pleaded guilty at an early stage and had behaved well in subsequent years. The sentencing judge had found no risk of reoffending.
The Court of Appeal set the appropriate headline sentence at two years and six months. Taking account of the mitigating factors, it imposed an actual sentence of 18 months, suspending the final six months for 12 months on J. H. entering a €100 bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour.