The Court of Appeal has dismissed S. O’L’s appeal against a nine-year prison sentence for five sexual offences involving a complainant aged 13 to 14. The sentence included the suspension of its final two years on terms.
The judgment, delivered by Ms Justice Kennedy on 29 June 2020, concerned an appeal against sentence. S. O’L had pleaded guilty on the day of trial to one count of defilement, one count of sexual exploitation and three counts of sexual assault. The sentencing judge imposed concurrent sentences, using a 12-year headline sentence before reducing it to nine years and suspending two years.
The offences took place between September 2014 and August 2015. The complainant had an intellectual disability and lived with her mother. S. O’L lived nearby, began a relationship with the mother and often stayed at their home. The judgment recounts the complainant’s account of sexual contact and sexualised text messages. S. O’L later admitted some sexual contact but said it had been initiated by the complainant; he denied sending sexualised texts.
On appeal, S. O’L argued that the sentencing judge had wrongly treated his attribution of fault to the complainant as aggravating, failed to give enough weight to his admissions, cooperation and guilty pleas, and imposed an excessive headline sentence. He also argued that the same headline sentence should not have applied across offences involving different acts. The Director of Public Prosecutions defended the sentencing approach, submitting that the headline sentence reflected the combined, ongoing offending while concurrent terms avoided a disproportionate cumulative sentence.
The Court of Appeal accepted that the headline sentence was “somewhat high” but held it remained within the sentencing judge’s margin of appreciation. It said the offending’s duration was relevant to the headline sentence and that the judge was entitled to consider the complainant’s vulnerability, age, the escalation and prolonged nature of the offending, abuse of trust and S. O’L’s previous sexual assault conviction. The court also found that his claim that the complainant initiated the contact was relevant to his insight and remorse, and that the judge had not given it disproportionate weight.
The appeal court acknowledged that the sentencing judge had not differentiated between categories of offending when imposing sentence, but concluded that the overall sentence was appropriate. It found no error in the sentencing approach and dismissed the appeal. The sentence therefore remained nine years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended on terms.