Top Rape Defence Barrister

Despite inadmissible opinion evidence from prosecution witnesses having been adduced before the jury, convictions for sexual assault and assault by penetration were safe.

A challenge, by way of judicial review, by a young offender convicted of the murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl, to an excepting direction which discharged a reporting restriction order imposed under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.45(3), was refused.

A sentence of 16 months’ imprisonment imposed on a man in his early 20s who had shared indecent images of children with workmates on a building site, but had done so for shock value and had no unhealthy interest in children, was suspended on appeal. An immediate custodial sentence was disproportionate where the possession and […]

A custodial sentence of 9 years and 6 months and a further probation period of one year imposed on a 91-year-old former monk for historical offences of indecent assault, buggery and attempted buggery was unduly lenient, and was replaced with a custodial term of 12 years.

The appropriate total sentence for two offences of sexual assault and one of blackmail was an immediate custodial term of three years. When imposing a suspended sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment, the sentencing judge had given too much weight to mitigating factors, including the fact that the offender had Asperger’s Syndrome, and insufficient weight to […]

A sentence of five months’ imprisonment which had been imposed on a father following his conviction for sexually assaulting his two-year-old son was unduly lenient. The offence merited a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment together with the imposition of a sexual offences prevention order.

As the Attorney General had a statutory responsibility to personally consider whether sentences should be referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, it was inimical to the public interest for judges, when exercising their discretion as to the provision of a transcript of a sentence hearing, to restrict or limit the provision of […]

There might be cases where guidance from the trial judge on myths and stereotypes in rape cases would be appropriate to benefit a defendant, but the instant case, in which the defendant was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice after making repeated and false allegations of rape, was not one of them. […]

Total sentences of six years and nine months’ imprisonment and six years’ imprisonment imposed on a male and female offender respectively following guilty pleas to child sex offences were lenient, but not unduly lenient. The female offender had sent the male offender images of her and her daughter, aged between two and six, engaging in […]

The terms of a sexual offences prevention order imposed on an offender who had been sentenced for voyeurism, which included an almost blanket ban on using the internet, were changed where its terms did not conform to the guidance given in R. v Smith (Steven) [2011] EWCA Crim 1772 with the result that it was […]