Case Precedent

The court upheld a sexual harm prevention order, imposed for an indefinite duration, where an offender had received concurrent suspended prison sentences of 18 months after pleading guilty to three offences of possession of indecent photographs of a child and one offence of possessing an extreme pornographic image. Although the order had been imposed in circumstances which were far from satisfactory because the judge had not given explicit reasons to support the making of an indefinite order, the offender had given no indication whatsoever that he would address his offending behaviour and its causes. An order for an indefinite duration was necessary and proportionate.

An offender’s appeal against the variation of his SHPO to prohibit foreign travel was dismissed, as the police were unable to monitor the risk he presented when he was abroad and their duty to protect children and vulnerable people from the offender included those both in and out of the UK.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission had been justified in refusing to refer the claimant’s two convictions for sexual offences to the Court of Appeal. The fresh evidence on which he had sought to rely did not give rise to a real possibility that the convictions would not be upheld.

A conviction for sexual assault was safe, even though a central piece of evidence for the prosecution was the hearsay statement of the two-and-a-half-year-old victim. The statement had properly been admitted under the Criminal Justice (Evidence) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 art.18(1)(d) and the judge had given appropriate directions to the jury about how it was to be treated.

A total extended sentence of seven years and six months’ imprisonment for historic offences of attempted buggery, indecency with a child and indecent assault on a man committed by an individual aged 20-25 against his neighbour aged 10-14, whilst lenient, was not unduly so. Although aspects of the judge’s reasoning had been flawed, the offences had very unpleasant features and there had been an element of grooming, no violence had been used.

The General Pharmaceutical Council’s Fitness to Practice Committee had been entitled to remove a locum from the register of pharmacists where it had used its expertise and experience to form the view that there was a risk that he would repeat behaviour that had led him to commit serious sexual offences and where he had shown little insight into his conduct.

A sentence of three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment imposed on an offender for historic offences of buggery and indecent assault on a fellow resident at a children’s home was unduly lenient. The offender satisfied the dangerousness criteria and a sentence of five years and ten months’ imprisonment with a three-year extension period was appropriate.

The conviction of a vulnerable adult with a severe learning disability for the offence of sexual activity by a care worker with a person with a mental disability was unsafe, and was accordingly quashed, where inadequate consideration had been given to his learning disability in the course of the trial. Fresh psychological evidence demonstrated that he would have had difficulty in dealing with leading questions asked in cross-examination, and that might have left the jury with a false impression.

A member of a group under police surveillance who had entered into a sexual relationship with an undercover police officer was unable to establish that her lack of knowledge as to the officer’s true identity vitiated her consent to sexual relations within the meaning of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.74. There was no justification for extending the common law position as contended for by the claimant, namely that the matter to which the deception related had to be sufficiently serious in objective terms as to be capable of being regarded as relevant to a woman’s decision-making and that, subjectively, the deception went to a matter which the woman regarded as critical or fundamental to her decision-making.