The Court of Appeal dismissed C.A.’s appeal against his convictions for two counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault, but quashed the sentences for the rape counts and resentenced him to nine years in prison, with the final two years suspended.
The convictions followed a five-day Central Criminal Court trial. A majority jury found C.A. guilty in June 2021 of the four offences, which the judgment says occurred between early 1998 and the end of 1999. The jury unanimously found him not guilty of a separate sexual assault count alleged to have occurred in 1997.
C.A. appealed his convictions and sentences. At the conviction appeal hearing, he pursued a challenge to the trial judge’s refusal to stop the trial because the complainant had given evidence about incidents she had not previously described in her statements or at an earlier trial.
The Court of Appeal said the additional incidents were evidence of uncharged misconduct. It found no specific prejudice to C.A. and noted that the defence had been able to question the complainant about the later accounts and argue that she had not mentioned them before. The court found no error in refusing the application and dismissed the conviction appeal.
The original rape sentences were concurrent terms of 10 years, with the final year suspended. The appeal court said the sentencing judge had set a 12-year headline sentence and reduced it by two years for mitigation. C.A. argued that the reduction did not sufficiently account for his age, previous good character, work record and family support.
The appeal court said the other personal circumstances offered only slight mitigation in the context of multiple serious offences, and that the sentencing judge had taken them into account. But it accepted that a prison sentence would weigh more heavily on a person of C.A.’s advanced age, then 75, and found that the failure to give greater allowance for his age was an error of principle.
The court quashed the sentences on the two rape counts and imposed a nine-year term, suspending the final two years on the same terms as the original suspension. It said it also took account of C.A.’s participation in a sex offender course at Mountjoy Prison. The judgment does not state that the sentences for the sexual assault counts were changed.