The Court of Appeal upheld a two-year prison sentence for a man convicted of sexual assault and burglary, but suspended its final nine months and imposed 15 months of post-release supervision by the Probation Service.
The court, in a judgment delivered on 23 February 2017, was dealing with an appeal against the severity of sentence. It had already dismissed the man’s separate appeal against conviction. It confirmed the two-year sentence imposed by the Circuit Court and directed that the suspended portion be subject to a bond.
The offences followed an incident at a hotel in Wexford on 11 October 2008. The judgment says the victim was asleep in her hotel bedroom. The court agreed with the sentencing judge’s assessment of the sexual assault as a mid-range offence, citing fondling of the victim’s breasts and digital penetration. It described the offence as serious and referred to the grave and lasting consequences set out in a victim impact report.
The man had been 17 at the time. The sentencing judge had taken account of his youth, lack of previous convictions, supportive family and absence of further convictions when reducing a proposed three-year sentence to two years. The appeal court said two years was not excessive, but concluded that the sentence should have been structured differently to provide supervision after release.
The court also considered that he had not reoffended during the nearly eight years between the incident and trial and sentence, and had completed a third-level qualification apart from one paper he needed to repeat. A probation report had initially assessed him as high risk of reoffending and later as moderate risk. It recommended exploring a sex-offender programme and work on alcohol awareness. The court noted that much of the delay was attributable to an unsuccessful judicial review application brought by the appellant and said it could not treat the resulting stress as mitigation.
The supervision order requires participation in the Better Lives Programme or another sex-offender programme identified by the Probation Service, work with the service on alcohol awareness, and compliance with its general directions. The court also directed that any part of the sentence still unserved as of 30 May be suspended to allow time for the appellant to sit a repeat paper, subject to entering into a bond.