The Court of Appeal has quashed a four-year prison sentence, with the final 12 months suspended, for defilement of a child under 15 and imposed a two-year sentence instead. The new sentence runs from the same date as the Circuit Court sentence.
The court allowed John Paul Conroy’s appeal against the severity of the sentence imposed by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 24 November 2017. It said the sentencing judge’s six-year pre-mitigation starting point was too high, although the appeal court agreed that the offence had aggravating factors and could not be treated as falling in the low range of seriousness.
The offence took place on 17 July 2015. The complainant, then 14 and a half, had been drinking vodka and cola at a teenage disco in south Dublin and became unwell. She contacted Conroy, whom she had not previously met, because he was the only person she knew who had a car. The judgment says he collected her near the disco and sexually assaulted her in the car. She was later dropped near her home and told her sister what had happened. She made a complaint at a Garda station the next day.
The court noted that the complainant was visibly intoxicated and unwell, depended on Conroy to get home, and was significantly younger. It also referred to the serious and lasting impact described in her victim impact report. The sentencing judge had treated the opportunistic nature of the offence and the intimacy of the sexual act as aggravating factors; Conroy’s appeal challenged those assessments. The appeal court’s stated reasons for its decision focused on the starting sentence and mitigating circumstances.
The court said a starting sentence of no more than five years would have been appropriate given that the complainant was close to 15, when the statutory maximum would have been five years rather than life imprisonment. It set the pre-mitigation sentence at four years, then reduced it to two years to account for Conroy’s guilty plea, apology, admissions, cooperation, remorse, lack of previous convictions, youth, learning difficulties and family support.
The court also considered updated positive reports about his conduct and participation in education and work while in Arbour Hill. It said it would hear counsel on whether post-release supervision was desirable or necessary. The judgment’s concluding order quashed the Circuit Court sentence and imposed two years’ imprisonment, backdated to the same day as the original sentence.