AGE

A 29-year extended sentence, which included a custodial term of 21 years, imposed on a young adult offender following a campaign of rape against victims aged between 13 and 16, was excessive. Insufficient weight had been given to the offender’s age, lack of maturity and unstable background. An extended sentence of 26 years, with an 18-year custodial term, was appropriate.

A judge had not erred in refusing a late application to admit expert evidence as to an appellant’s intellectual ability to assess age at his trial for child sex offences. The assessment of age was not a particularly intellectual process and the appellant’s own evidence had been that he had no difficulty with judging age.

In a trial of charges of sexual offences against the defendant’s daughter and granddaughter, the judge had been entitled to rule that the complainants’ various complaints were mutually cross-admissible. Further, the complainants’ evidence had not been contaminated.

A sentencing judge had been entitled to refuse to adjust a sentence for newly discovered offences of indecency with a child by reference to what the overall sentence would have been had all the circumstances been known during an earlier sentencing exercise for similar offences where the offender had chosen not to disclose the extent of his offending.

A sentence of 15 months’ imprisonment imposed for 14 historic indecent assaults was unduly lenient and was increased to one of 30 months. Even though the offender, a highly regarded television and radio presenter with no previous convictions, was 83 years old, in poor health, and had not offended for over 25 years, the original sentence did not reflect the offences’ criminality given their lifelong impact on the victims and public concern over sexual crimes against children and young victims.

Where a defendant had taken indecent photographs of a 17-year-old girl following intercourse on a “one night stand”, the judge had been correct to reject an argument that the situation came within the terms of the defence set out in the Protection of Children Act 1978 s.1A.

A jury had not reached inconsistent verdicts by acquitting an offender on one count of rape of his niece but finding him guilty on another as there were grounds on which it could have reached different views on the offences, including the age of the victim at the time of each alleged offence.

Convictions for five counts of rape and one count of indecent assault were safe, as there were no particular circumstances that required the judge to have given directions relating to the age of the victims, delay, an elaborated good character direction, or a recent complaint direction.

A community order with a requirement to attend a sex offender’s programme and attend probation appointments for three years imposed on a 72-year-old offender who had pleaded guilty to six offences of indecent assault on females under 13, which had taken place up to 40 years previously, was not unduly lenient and a non-custodial sentence was in the proper range of sentences available to the judge who had exercised extreme caution in assessing the circumstances of the case.