ASSAULT BY PENETRATION

Despite the absence of certain evidence at trial, the appellant’s convictions for sexual assault and rape of his half-sister were safe, because the totality of the trial process including the directions given and the summing up was fair.

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 sentence of four months’ imprisonment for assault by penetration by an individual against his partner of 23 years was unduly lenient; offences committed in the domestic context were no less serious than those committed in a non-domestic context. The sentence was quashed and was replaced by one of 21 months’ imprisonment suspended for 24 months.

Evidence of a step-father’s controlling behaviour towards his wife and step-son had been relevant evidence at his trial for 16 sexual offences against his step-daughter, as his defence was that his step-daughter was lying and exaggerating his controlling behaviour and the evidence was relevant to the issue of her credibility. A total sentence of 22 years’ imprisonment was not manifestly excessive.

It was appropriate to reduce an extended sentence of 19 years’ imprisonment imposed on a offender following his guilty plea to assault by penetration where he had lain in wait for a victim in a car park late at night and then assaulted a lone female and threatened to kill her. Despite the significant degree of planning, the element of opportunism and lack of sophistication in the offence had to be borne in mind, and in those circumstances an overall extended sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment was appropriate.

Sentences of nine years’ imprisonment were neither unduly lenient nor manifestly excessive for two offenders who had raped an intoxicated young woman in an alleyway outside a nightclub. It had been appropriate not to impose a consecutive sentence for digital anal penetration by one of the offenders.

An acquittal on counts of rape and assault by penetration would be quashed and a retrial ordered where the complainant had left the country after giving an achieving best evidence interview and the Crown had offered no evidence at trial. There was new and compelling evidence in the form of the complainant’s evidence which was available when she returned to the country, and a retrial would be in the interests of justice.

An offender’s conviction for assault by penetration of the vagina had not been inconsistent with his acquittal for offences of attempted rape and sexual assault by anal penetration. Nor could his conviction be overturned on the grounds that the judge had given the jury a Watson direction at the same time as a majority verdict direction, as there was no evidence that the jury had been pressured into delivering compromise verdicts.

A sentence of detention for public protection with a minimum term of four years imposed on an offender for attempted rape and assault by penetration was unduly lenient and a minimum term of six years was substituted.