INDECENCY

Concurrent sentences of two years’ imprisonment for historic offences of indecent assault and indecency with a child committed against the offender’s sister when he was aged 14-16 were reduced to concurrent one-year sentences. The offender, now over 70, was gravely ill and nearing the end of his life, and the original sentence was, in justice and in mercy, longer than necessary.

A sentence of six years’ imprisonment following convictions for historic charges of rape, indecency with a child and sexual assault, committed against a 13-year-old girl, was increased to 12 years’ imprisonment where the judge had departed from the sentencing guidelines without giving reasons for doing so and where the sentence imposed failed to reflect the totality of the offending.

The court rejected a submission that photographs of young naked children could not be indecent as a matter of law: that question was for a jury to decide, and any categorisation of those photographs was only useful for sentencing purposes.

A sentence of four years’ imprisonment imposed after trial for indecent assault was unduly lenient where the offender, who was akin to a stepfather to a seven-year-old child, had committed sexual acts against her, forcing her to perform oral sex on him. A sentence of seven years’ imprisonment was substituted.

A 30-year delay on the part of a complainant did not render an offender’s convictions for indecent assault, indecency with a child, and rape unsafe as the judge had sufficiently dealt with any prejudice to the offender in his summing up and directions to the jury and there had been other evidence that supported the complainant’s evidence.

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 twelve months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, for six counts of gross indecency with a child was unduly lenient where the offender’s lack of contrition had seriously aggravated his offending, and was replaced with two years and three months’ imprisonment, not suspended.

It had been open to a jury to be satisfied on the evidence that alleged historic child sexual abuse had continued into the period on the indictment. It was not open to the Court of Appeal to review the evidence and come to a different conclusion.

A sentence of eight years’ imprisonment was the very minimum that the court could impose following a plea of guilty to the rape of a young boy, which had been committed in breach of trust and against a background of repeated and regular sexual abuse. The court would be sympathetic to those who had been abused themselves, but such abuse could not excuse a child victim turning adult predator. The sentence of four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment was unduly lenient.