The Court of Appeal reduced B.V.’s sentence for rape and related sexual offences from 12 years’ imprisonment to 10 years after allowing an appeal against severity of sentence.
The judgment, delivered on 5 February 2018, set aside the sentence imposed by the Central Criminal Court on 11 July 2016 and substituted a 10-year term running from the same date as the original sentence. The appeal concerned sentence only; the judgment says the convictions followed a jury trial and that the Court of Appeal had already delivered a separate judgment on the appeal against conviction.
B.V. had been convicted of rape, oral rape under section 4, and 27 counts of sexual assault against his stepdaughter. The offending occurred between 1994 and 2000, when the complainant was approximately 10 to 16 years old. The judgment describes the rape as the culmination of a progressive and frequent campaign of abuse, and says the offending occurred mostly in the family home.
The trial judge treated the rape as the central offence, assessed a starting sentence of 14 years and reduced it by two years to reflect limited mitigation, including the passage of time and B.V.’s good behaviour before and after the offending. The judge also imposed concurrent sentences of eight years for the section 4 rape and two and a half years for each sexual assault count.
The Court of Appeal agreed the offending was very serious, citing the grave and lasting harm, the appellant’s position of trust as a stepparent, and the family home setting. But it found the 14-year starting point somewhat out of line with sentences in comparable cases. It said a 12-year starting point was more appropriate because the offending ceased after the rape and the most serious offending was not repeated. Applying the same two-year reduction for mitigation, the court substituted a 10-year sentence. The judgment does not state that the concurrent sentences were separately varied.