Man’s rape and sexual assault sentence appeal dismissed

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

A 40-year-old man’s appeal against an 11-year sentence for raping and sexually assaulting his younger sister was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on 20 October 2022.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the injured party’s identity, was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 12 January 2016 after a five-day trial. He had been charged with 48 counts of rape and sexual assault. The 11-year sentence was reduced from a headline sentence of 14 years.

The offences took place between January 1999 and December 2005, when his sister was aged between 10 and 16. They included sexual assault with a screwdriver.

His counsel argued that the sentence was excessive, that the sentencing judge had wrongly assessed the gravity of the offences and that she had erred by not suspending part of the sentence. It was also argued that a minority of the offences were committed while the man was legally a child and might have attracted lower sentences.

Delivering judgment, Mr Justice John Edwards said the offending involved a serious abuse of familial trust, greater than usual degradation of the victim and intimidation beyond that normally associated with the offence. He said the court found no error in the sentencing judge’s approach or in her starting points of 14 years for the rape offences and five years for the sexual assault offences.

Mr Justice Edwards said the man did not plead guilty and that there had been no meaningful expression of remorse.