SEXUAL ASSAULT

The appropriate total sentence for two offences of sexual assault and one of blackmail was an immediate custodial term of three years. When imposing a suspended sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment, the sentencing judge had given too much weight to mitigating factors, including the fact that the offender had Asperger’s Syndrome, and insufficient weight to the seriousness of the blackmail offence. He had also erred in finding that the victim’s apparent consent to sexual activity on one occasion had lessened the seriousness of the subsequent sexual assaults.

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.

As the Attorney General had a statutory responsibility to personally consider whether sentences should be referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, it was inimical to the public interest for judges, when exercising their discretion as to the provision of a transcript of a sentence hearing, to restrict or limit the provision of such information on such a request from the Attorney General.

In imposing a 12-month period of suspension on a solicitor sentenced to a 12-month community order and a five-year notification requirement on the sex offenders register for convictions of sexual assault and racially aggravated assault, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal had erred in its failure to consider the period of suspension necessary to protect the reputation of the profession and the public confidence in the profession, and in taking into account the period for which the solicitor had not been able to practise prior to an order of the court being made.

A claimant failed to show that disclosure on enhanced criminal record certificates of an allegation of sexual assault of which he had been acquitted was disproportionate and inaccurate.

A Lucas direction would not have been appropriate, or helpful to the defendant. where an allegation of sexual assault turned wholly on the jury’s assessment of the respective credibility of the defendant and the complainant.

At a fact-finding hearing relating to the death and possible sexual assault of a child, the court highlighted difficulties with the approach to police disclosure outlined in the 2013 Protocol and Good Practice Model and made detailed suggestions for new procedural guidelines, subject to formal review by the President of the Family Division.

Sentences of six years’ imprisonment following a conviction for attempted rape and 30 months’ imprisonment, to be served concurrently, following a conviction for sexual assault, were not unduly lenient where the judge had taken into account totality, but had been motivated by mercy.

It was a technical error to impose a single global extension period when sentencing for two or more offences by means of consecutive extended sentences. Simplicity was achieved by imposing one single extended sentence on one of the offences, and setting its terms having regard to all the other features of the case.