The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against the severity of a 13-year prison sentence and five years of post-release supervision imposed on W.M. for rape and sexual assault offences against four complainants, all his nieces.
W.M. pleaded guilty in February 2017 to three counts of rape and four counts of sexual assault. The Central Criminal Court sentenced him in May 2017. The appeal court, in a judgment delivered on 31 July 2018, found no error of principle and concluded that the sentences were proportionate.
The offences took place between 2001 and 2010. The appeal judgment records that the complainants were children or teenagers at the time and that some offences involved force, restraint or threats. The rape offences involved the same complainant. The court said the sentencing judge made offences involving the same victim concurrent, while making offences involving different victims consecutive.
The sentence comprised concurrent seven-year terms for the rapes; a one-year term for one sexual assault, concurrent with those terms; and three consecutive two-year terms for the other sexual assaults. The resulting prison term was 13 years. The five-year supervision period requires W.M. to follow directions from the Probation and Welfare Service.
The appeal challenged the overall term, the two-year sentences for three sexual assaults, the use of consecutive terms, the weight given to W.M.’s cognitive limitations and guilty pleas, and the sentencing judge’s treatment of a risk assessment. The psychologists had assessed the risk of reoffending as moderate to low, but they had not been told that W.M. had been charged with a further offence. The appeal court said the sentencing judge was entitled to reject their risk opinion on that basis. It stressed that the later charge was not treated as an aggravating fact in sentencing and that no view was expressed on whether an offence had occurred.
The appeal court considered the sentencing judge’s headline terms severe but within the permitted range. It found that the guilty pleas and other personal circumstances had been sufficiently reflected in the reductions. It also held that consecutive sentences were appropriate given the number of complainants and the overall pattern of offending, and that the sentencing judge had respected the totality principle.
The court therefore dismissed the appeal, leaving the sentence and supervision order in place.