202501950 A5 - [2025] EWCA Crim 1047

In a long and detailed letter to the Recorder, the Offender’s mother recounted the Offender’s developmental difficulties involving speech and toilet training, the familial difficulties including difficulties caused by neuro-divergence, the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and its effect on the Offender, raising the question of his confused sexuality when he was 13. She gave an account of the police interaction with the Offender and how he had kept going with a good work ethic, having recently been made permanent in his job. She described the Offender as caring and compassionate. She spoke of his shame and regret and that he had matured in the last year, with the aid of psychiatric sessions.

The Offender’s stepfather charted the Offender’s decline to the state he was in when committing the offences. In a reflective letter to the Recorder, he expressed the opinion that, although prison was obviously an option, it would do no good whatsoever for a person who was trying to move forward as best he could with a full-time job and qualifications achieved through is work and a determination to do the right thing.