The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against the severity of an 8½-year prison sentence imposed on a man convicted of raping and sexually assaulting his younger brother when both were children.
In a judgment delivered on 30 January 2024, Mr Justice Edwards said the Central Criminal Court had not erred in setting the sentence. Three sentences of 8½ years for rape and four sentences of two years for sexual assault were ordered to run concurrently, backdated to the date of conviction. The Court of Appeal left those sentences in place. No post-release supervision had been ordered at sentencing.
The appellant, identified in the judgment as G.D., was aged between 14 and 18 during the offending, which took place from 1998 to 2002. His brother, identified as the complainant, was approximately 10 to 14. The convictions followed a contested trial. The offences included sexual touching and oral and anal rape; the appellant was acquitted on one additional sexual assault count. His appeal against conviction had previously been dismissed.
The Court of Appeal accepted the appellant’s submission that individual offences did not involve more than usual degradation or violence beyond that inherent in the offences. But it held that the combined aggravating factors justified placing the offences in the 10-to-15-year sentencing range that would apply to an adult. The court cited persistent offending over several years, an escalation in seriousness, the complainant’s vulnerability, the exploited age difference and sibling relationship, and the lasting trauma described to the sentencing court.
The sentencing judge had identified 13 years as the headline sentence for an adult offender, then reduced it to 8½ years to account for mitigation, including the appellant’s age when offending. The appeal court said 13 years was within the judge’s margin of appreciation. It also found the approximately 35 per cent overall reduction was not an error of principle. The appellant was entitled to a substantial reduction because he was a minor, the court said, though the most serious offences occurred when he was close to adulthood. He had not pleaded guilty, so no guilty-plea reduction applied.
The court also noted that the appellant had not offended since reaching adulthood and appeared to have led a prosocial life. His mental health difficulties could make imprisonment harder to cope with. It nevertheless concluded that the sentencing judge’s approach fell within the permissible range and dismissed the appeal.