The Court of Appeal reduced a man’s sentence for sexual offences against his sister, finding that the sentencing judge had not adequately reflected his progress towards rehabilitation and other mitigating factors.
The court quashed the sentence imposed below and substituted six years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended for two years. The suspension is conditional on the appellant not reoffending, engaging with therapeutic services while in prison, and submitting to and cooperating with Probation Service supervision during the suspended period.
The appellant had pleaded guilty to two counts of rape and eight counts of sexual assault. The sexual assault counts were taken into consideration at sentencing. The offending occurred between 2000 and 2002, when the appellant was a minor. His sister, who was 10 when the abuse began, has waived her entitlement to anonymity.
The sentencing judge set a headline sentence of eight years and directed four years of post-release supervision. The appellant appealed the severity of the sentence, arguing that his age at the time of the offences reduced his culpability and that the judge had not adequately taken other mitigating factors into account.
The Court of Appeal rejected the challenge to the eight-year headline sentence. It said the offending was particularly egregious and caused very significant harm. It considered that, for the same offences in otherwise similar circumstances involving an adult offender, a headline sentence of eight years would not have been appropriate; a starting point of 10 to 12 years would have been more appropriate. The court said eight years was within the sentencing judge’s legitimate margin of appreciation for this appellant, who was a minor when the offences occurred.
But the appeal court found an error in how mitigation had been reflected in the sentence. It said the guilty pleas, although not entered at the earliest opportunity, were valuable. The court also cited the appellant’s cooperation with the investigation, the delay that was not his fault, his steps towards rehabilitation, employment, and willingness to engage with therapeutic support. It concluded that the discount for mitigation was insufficient and that the sentence did not incentivise continued rehabilitation.
The judgment, delivered on 26 January 2018, does not state that the appeal court separately continued the four-year post-release supervision order made below. Its substituted sentence instead specifies the conditions applying during the suspended period.