The Court of Appeal has quashed the four-year sentence imposed on John McClean for offences against 22 former pupils and resentenced him to a global term of 2.5 years, consecutive to the effective eight-year term he is serving for earlier offences.
In a judgment delivered on 4 July 2024, the court said the original sentence brought the effective total to 12 years. It found that figure 18 months above the top of the proportionate range it assessed for McClean’s offending against 45 victims across the two sets of proceedings, taking account of mitigation, his age and his health.
McClean had appealed the severity of the sentence imposed by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in February 2023. He had pleaded guilty to offences on two bills involving indecent and sexual assaults against pupils at a Dublin secondary school, where he worked as a teacher and rugby coach. The Court of Appeal described the offending as predatory, involving repeated abuse of the trust and authority attached to his roles.
The Circuit Court imposed four years on each count to which McClean had pleaded guilty, with those sentences running concurrently with each other but consecutively to the earlier sentence. That earlier sentence, imposed in 2021 for offences involving 23 victims, was 11 years with the final three years suspended, leaving an effective custodial term of eight years.
The appeal court said a global sentencing approach was appropriate given the number of offences and victims. It found that the sentencing judge had not erred simply by using that approach, failing to state a headline sentence or refusing to suspend part of the new sentence. However, the court said the original overall sentence was too severe. It also criticised the lack of transparency in the sentencing reasons and the imposition of the same four-year term for offences carrying different maximum penalties.
In resentencing, the Court of Appeal set headline terms of 30 months for offences carrying a five-year maximum and five years for offences carrying a 10-year maximum. It applied discounts for mitigation, age and health, producing individual terms of 15 or 30 months. All are concurrent with one another and consecutive to the effective eight-year term in the earlier case. The resulting sentence for the offences in this appeal is 2.5 years.