The Court of Appeal has reduced the sentence imposed on Thomas Mooney for indecent assaults committed against a child at his Gardiner Street flat in Dublin during the 1980s.
Mooney was convicted at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in July 2014 of eight counts of indecent assault. Three counts had originally attracted concurrent four-year sentences with the final two years suspended, while the remaining five convictions were taken into consideration.
The sentence had been imposed on the mistaken understanding that the maximum available penalty was ten years. It later emerged that the maximum sentence for each offence at the relevant time was two years.
The Court of Appeal held that this was an obvious error of principle and carried out a fresh sentencing exercise.
The offences occurred at Mooney’s basement flat at 33 Gardiner Street between July 1983 and June 1985. The judgment records that the child was persuaded to attend the flat and perform sexual acts in return for payment. The victim later reported abuse by Mooney and by other men.
When Gardaí approached Mooney in 2010, he immediately acknowledged the abuse and said he wanted to clear the matter up. He had no previous convictions. The court also considered his difficult background, limited intellectual capacity, age and deteriorating health.
The appeal court agreed with the original judge that the offending fell in the middle range, towards its lower end. It nevertheless stressed that sexual offending against children will almost always require a custodial sentence, even where the offender has no previous convictions.
Although consecutive sentences could lawfully have produced an overall term similar to the original sentence, the court decided that a lengthy further period in custody was unnecessary given Mooney’s circumstances.
It imposed concurrent terms of 14 months on each count, with the final 11 months suspended, and directed that he receive credit for time already spent in custody.