The Court of Appeal has dismissed K.C.’s appeal against the severity of a nine-year prison sentence for indecent assault, finding no error in principle in the sentence imposed by the Dublin Circuit Court.
The sentence was imposed on 12 January 2015 after K.C. was convicted following a contested trial. It related to one count of indecent assault, with about 15 other counts taken into consideration. K.C.’s separate appeal against conviction had been dismissed on 30 May 2016.
The convictions concerned abuse committed between 1983 and 1987, when the complainant was aged seven to 11 and K.C. was aged 21 to 25. The judgment said K.C. and the complainant were brother and sister and lived in the same house. The abuse began around the complainant’s first communion and occurred about four or five times a week, with two periods when K.C. was away from the family home. It ended when the complainant, after attending sex education classes at school, told K.C. the abuse was wrong.
At the sentence hearing, victim impact evidence described the complainant as severely affected. The judgment recorded depression, periods of suicidal feelings and self-harm, and attempts to cope through alcohol and prescription drugs.
K.C. argued that the sentence was unduly and disproportionately severe, pointing to personal circumstances and the consequences of imprisonment and sex-offender registration. The appeal also challenged the sentencing judge’s remarks that the assaults were not, individually, among the most serious, but were exceptionally serious because of their number.
The Court of Appeal said sexual offences against children are always serious and identified aggravating features including the sibling relationship, the length of time the abuse continued through the complainant’s childhood, and its frequency. It said there was limited scope for mitigation in the absence of a guilty plea, while acknowledging factors the sentencing judge had considered in K.C.’s favour.
The court said imposing a substantial sentence for one offence while taking the others into consideration was permissible. It described the nine-year term as significant and severe, at the upper end of the available range, but concluded it did not fall outside that range. The court therefore dismissed the sentence appeal.