Case No 2024/01343/B4 - [2025] EWCA Crim 1370

Mr Acworth submits that the judge did not take sufficient account of the difference between the ten year statutory maxima for the offences of which the appellant had been convicted and the Sexual Offences Act 2003 equivalents.

He also contends that the judge failed to take sufficient account of the number of incidents to which each count related in the context of the case as a whole. In this regard, he emphasises that the judge imposed a sentence of nine years' imprisonment on count 4 which concerned five similar incidents committed against C1, yet he also imposed nine years' imprisonment in relation to count 21 (which involved two incidents) and seven years' imprisonment in respect of the single incident counts (counts 9 and 14).

Mr Acworth further submits that the judge imposed an overall sentence that was manifestly disproportionate in ordering the sentences for counts 9 and 14 to run consecutively rather than concurrently, when he should have taken the latter course in order to take proper account of totality considerations. He submits that the reductions which the judge did make to take account of totality were insufficient.

In his skeleton argument, filed in response to the Respondent's skeleton argument, Mr Acworth raises a further issue, namely that the judge was wrong to find that count 14 was a category 2A offence in terms of its modern equivalence, as there was no Culpability A factor present. Had the judge approached matters on the basis of the modern day equivalent, this was a category 2B offence, the staring point for which would have been eight years' imprisonment, with an offence range of seven - nine years' imprisonment.

Consistent with the request made by the Full Court at the previous hearing, Mr Acworth drew our attention to the following illustrative examples: R v DJ [2015] EWCA Crim 563, [2015] Cr App R (S) 16 and R v Jones [2018] EWCA Crim 1499. He submits that these cases tend to suggest that offending meriting a sentence after trial of 30 years' imprisonment is of a different order of gravity to the offences for which the appellant was convicted.