INDECENT ASSAULT

A total sentence of eight years’ imprisonment was appropriate for an individual convicted of four counts of historic sexual offences involving a young child. Two of the counts had been part of the same incident and course of conduct and the sentences on those counts were made concurrent rather than consecutive in order to reduce the total sentence.

A sentence of nine years’ imprisonment, following convictions for three historic offences of sexual assault against a child, was increased to 14 years’ where the offending had been frequent and repeated and where the judge had wrongly constrained himself by the maximum sentence available for a single offence.

An immediate 15-month custodial sentence imposed on a 68-year-old man in respect of offences of incest and indecent assault which he had committed against his younger sister when aged 15 was replaced with a community penalty. The judge had been misled by not being referred to the relevant guidelines for sentencing youths, and he had not been justified in imposing a far harsher sentence than would have been imposed if the offender had been a 15-year-old boy at the time of sentencing.

In a criminal case concerning historical sexual offences, the judge had not favoured the prosecution in his directions to the jury, and the appellate court was not left with any sense of unease about the safety of the convictions.

Developments in medical knowledge that reduced the diagnostic significance of physical signs of abuse in children did not render a conviction prior to the change in approach unsafe.

A sentencing judge had erred in passing sentence for historic offences of indecent assault by referring to a notional sentencing guideline with a starting point midway in the statutory range at the time of the offence rather than adopting the current starting points and the relevant sentencing ranges, subject to the earlier statutory maximum.

A suspended sentence of two years’ imprisonment was increased by lifting the suspended element and imposing an immediate two-year custodial sentence, for an offender who had pleaded guilty to ten counts of historic sexual abuse. The court noted that this was an exceptional case, in which the offender had volunteered the fact of a second victim, and said it should not be treated as a precedent.

An offender who had been incorrectly convicted of indecent assault instead of gross indecency with a child had his appeal against conviction allowed and his sentence reduced to six years’ imprisonment.

A sentence of imprisonment for public protection, which had been unlawfully imposed following an offender’s guilty pleas to two offences of indecent assault committed before the Criminal Justice Act 2003 Pt 12 s.225 came into force, was quashed and replaced by an extended sentence.