The Court of Appeal has upheld the sentence imposed on a 74-year-old man convicted of 17 historical indecent assaults on a boy aged between nine and 10.
WO’M was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Criminal Court on June 27, 2024. The offences occurred over about 14 months between January 1969 and March 1970, when the appellant was aged 18 to 19. He was a neighbour of the child and worked as a farmhand for the victim’s father.
The court recorded that much of the offending involved WO’M chasing the child around the farmyard, restraining him and painfully squeezing his genital area. Two counts concerned separate incidents involving more serious assaults, including one in a van in which the child was forced to masturbate the appellant.
On November 1, 2024, the Circuit Criminal Court imposed consecutive sentences of 16 months on Counts 1 and 2 and eight months on Counts 3 and 17, with the remaining counts taken into consideration. The final 12 months were suspended for one year, leaving an effective three-year custodial term.
WO’M argued on appeal that the sentence was excessive. He said insufficient weight had been given to his age at the time of the offences, his age when sentenced, his previously unblemished record and the fact that he had lived without further offending for more than 50 years.
The Court of Appeal rejected those arguments. It held that the maximum headline sentences selected for the two most serious sample counts were open to the sentencing judge given the sustained and serious nature of the offending. It also found no error in making sentences consecutive where concurrent terms would not adequately reflect repeated offending.
The court said the sentencing judge had expressly considered WO’M’s age, the burden imprisonment would impose on him, his good character over many decades and his loss of reputation.
Finding no error of principle, the Court of Appeal dismissed the sentence appeal.