1. Introduction
This decision concerns the sentencing of a criminal defence solicitor who sexually assaulted vulnerable clients over approximately 27 years. The Court of Appeal refused his renewed application for leave to appeal against a total sentence of 13 years’ imprisonment.
The central issue was whether the individual sentences and their combined effect were manifestly excessive, particularly given the nature of the touching, the applicant’s advanced age, serious health difficulties and asserted previous good character. The court held that the sentence properly reflected repeated exploitation of professional trust and the separate harm caused to multiple complainants.
The judgment is principally an application and clarification of established sentencing principles, rather than the announcement of a new legal test. Its significance lies in explaining how totality, professional exploitation, vulnerability and personal mitigation interact in a prolonged course of sexual offending.
2. Background and Procedural History
Following a trial at Winchester Crown Court, the applicant was convicted on 10 December 2025 of ten offences of indecent assault or sexual assault against seven former clients. The offences occurred between 1988 and 2015, through access obtained in his work as a criminal defence solicitor.
All the complainants were vulnerable. Some were children or young people; others experienced substance dependence, difficult family circumstances or chaotic lives. Most assaults occurred in police or court cells, where clients depended on the applicant for legal advice and assistance in obtaining release. Several had disclosed previous serious sexual abuse by others.
The professional relationship therefore involved more than ordinary confidence in an adviser. The applicant had practical influence over matters of immediate importance to the complainants, including their liberty. Most described feeling unable to report him because of that power.
A complaint by C7 in 2015 prompted an initial investigation. That investigation closed for reasons unknown to the court. A further investigation began in 2018 after additional complainants came forward, and earlier allegations were revisited.
On 25 February 2026, Her Honour Judge Morris imposed an aggregate sentence of 13 years’ imprisonment. A single judge subsequently refused permission to appeal against sentence. The applicant renewed that application before the Court of Appeal; the convictions themselves were not challenged in these proceedings.
3. Summary of the Judgment
The Court of Appeal rejected every proposed ground and refused leave to appeal because the proposed appeal had no real prospect of success. The court considered the 13-year term just and proportionate to the overall criminality, stating that it was not excessive at all.
The sentencing structure
The sentencing judge adopted a victim-by-victim approach. Three-year terms on counts 1, 11 and 13, together with a four-year term on count 17, were made consecutive, producing the 13-year total. The remaining sentences ran concurrently. The judge had reduced what would otherwise have been a substantially greater aggregate sentence to reflect totality.
| Challenged count |
Sentence |
Court of Appeal’s conclusion |
| 17 |
Four years, consecutive |
Within the category 2A range and justified by repeated offending against a client whose previous rape, serious mental health difficulties and fear of imprisonment were known to the applicant. |
| 20 |
Five years, concurrent |
Available to the judge despite exceeding the ordinary category 2A range, given the gravity of repeatedly exploiting a profoundly vulnerable client who had disclosed sustained sexual abuse. |
| 25 |
Two years, concurrent |
Upheld alongside count 20 as part of the sentencing response to the offending against that complainant. |
| 30 |
Three years, concurrent |
Not manifestly excessive; it reflected touching of naked genitalia and the total criminality against that complainant. Count 29 also ran concurrently. |
The applicant’s age, health, family circumstances and fall from professional standing did not make the sentence excessive. His asserted good character attracted no real mitigation in the circumstances of such extensive offending.
4. Precedents and Sentencing Framework
No previous judicial decisions are expressly cited in the judgment. There are therefore no cited case titles or individual authorities to analyse. Nor does the court identify a statutory sentencing provision or the title and edition of a particular sentencing guideline.
The judgment instead applies established sentencing concepts: proportionality, totality, concurrent and consecutive sentences, assessment of mitigation, and appellate review for manifest excess. Its references to category 2A show that guideline ranges informed the assessment of individual counts.
The treatment of counts 17 and 20 is important. The court distinguished a sentence within the applicable category range from one above its ordinary range, but upheld both on their particular facts. It did not create a new numerical starting point or a general rule that sexual offending by a solicitor automatically requires a sentence above the range.
Accordingly, the decision is best understood as a fact-sensitive illustration of sentencing principles, not as a replacement sentencing framework.
5. Analysis of the Court’s Reasoning
A. The nature of the touching was not the whole measure of seriousness
The applicant placed particular emphasis on the submission that the touching fell towards the lower end of the scale for this type of offending. The court rejected an assessment confined to the physical acts in isolation.
The surrounding circumstances materially increased seriousness: the offending was repeated, the complainants were vulnerable, and the applicant exploited a relationship in which they needed advice, protection and assistance. On some occasions, he also knew that the client had already suffered serious sexual abuse.
The reasoning demonstrates that a sexual assault’s gravity cannot necessarily be assessed from a brief description of the touching alone. The offender’s knowledge, the victim’s dependence and the misuse of professional access may be central to the sentencing assessment.
B. Professional trust was an instrument of exploitation
The applicant’s professional position was integral to the offending. It provided access to vulnerable clients and contributed to their reluctance to complain. Those detained in cells depended on him to advise them and seek their release, giving the relationship an immediate imbalance of power.
For counts 20 and 25, the court stressed that the applicant used the very relationship in which protection and trust were required to exploit the complainant further. That feature supported its conclusion that the offending was especially grave and that the five-year sentence on count 20 was available despite exceeding the ordinary category 2A range (paragraph 15).
This is not a holding that professional status alone justifies an increased sentence. The aggravating feature was the demonstrated misuse of that status and the applicant’s knowledge of the clients’ circumstances.
C. Totality required recognition of separate victims
The court’s central structural point was that there is no single correct way to arrange sentences in a multi-count case. Different combinations of concurrent and consecutive terms may produce a lawful and proportionate result. What particularly matters is whether the overall sentence reflects the total criminality after mitigation has been considered (paragraph 17).
Nevertheless, totality was not treated solely as a mechanism for reducing punishment. It also required the sentence to recognise the distinct harm suffered by different complainants. The court held that concurrent sentences alone could not properly mark that harm (paragraph 20).
The sentencing judge was therefore entitled to use consecutive terms to reach an appropriate aggregate, while making other terms concurrent to avoid an excessive cumulative result. Her approach involved both recognition of separate wrongdoing and restraint in the final total.
The court also explained that an objection to an individual concurrent term does not necessarily establish that the overall sentence is excessive. That observation does not make concurrent sentences immune from scrutiny: the court examined and upheld the challenged terms individually before approving the aggregate sentence.
D. Age and ill health were relevant but not decisive
The applicant was approaching 73 and had significant cardiac disease, previous bypass surgery, mobility difficulties, a knee replacement and mild vascular cognitive impairment. A recent transient ischaemic attack was also suspected.
The court expressly acknowledged that imprisonment would be more difficult for someone in his position. Its conclusion was not that these matters were irrelevant, but that the sentencing judge had already fully factored them into the sentence. Family circumstances and the applicant’s fall from grace had also been considered (paragraph 18).
The distinction is important: recognition of substantial mitigation does not necessarily require an appellate reduction. The remaining question is whether, after that mitigation, the sentence is disproportionate or manifestly excessive. The court concluded that it was not.
E. An apparently good reputation did not establish substantial mitigation
The applicant relied on previous good character, but the court considered that any mitigating force had been undermined by the breadth and duration of the offending. It involved numerous incidents against several complainants over many years; in the court’s assessment, good character had been lost at an early stage.
Moreover, his high professional reputation had helped put him in a position to exploit vulnerable clients. The reputation relied on in mitigation was therefore connected to the opportunity for offending rather than simply standing apart from it (paragraph 19).
The conclusion was expressly tied to this case and its circumstances. It does not establish that professional achievement or an absence of previous convictions can never mitigate sentence. It shows why apparent respectability may carry little weight where prolonged offending contradicts it and professional standing facilitates exploitation.
F. The underwear argument did not reduce the established criminality
For count 30, the applicant argued that he did not know the complainant was not wearing underwear. The court held that this did not change the intrinsic nature of the intentional sexual touching proved by the jury or make the sentence excessive (paragraph 16).
This was a sentencing conclusion on the established facts. The judgment did not undertake a separate analysis of the mental elements of a sexual offence or decide a wider question about liability for accidental contact.
6. Complex Concepts Simplified
- Renewed application for leave to appeal
- A further request for permission to appeal after a single judge has refused it. Here, permission was refused again; the court was not determining an appeal for which leave had already been granted.
- Manifestly excessive
- A sentence that is clearly excessive, not merely one that another judge might have set lower. The court considered both the individual terms and the overall result.
- Totality
- The requirement that the combined sentence for several offences should fairly reflect all the offending without becoming disproportionate through accumulation.
- Concurrent and consecutive sentences
- Concurrent terms run together; consecutive terms run one after another. Using both can recognise separate wrongdoing while keeping the final sentence proportionate.
- Category 2A
- A sentencing-guideline category used in assessing the relevant offences. The judgment does not reproduce its criteria or numerical range, so it should not be read as a complete explanation of that category.
- Abuse of professional trust
- Misusing a position in which another person reasonably depends on professional advice or protection. Here, the solicitor-client relationship enabled access, exploitation and reluctance to report.
7. Impact and Limits
The decision offers guidance for sentencing cases involving multiple victims and exploitation of a position of trust. It supports a contextual assessment of sexual offending, rather than an approach focused narrowly on the physical touching, and confirms that consecutive terms may be necessary to recognise harm to separate complainants.
For sentence appeals, it illustrates the importance of addressing the overall sentencing exercise rather than isolating selected concurrent terms. It also shows that age, serious illness and an apparently unblemished public reputation may be insufficient to establish excess where the sentencing judge has already considered them against sustained, grave offending.
Its limits remain important. The judgment does not prescribe a tariff for offending by solicitors, make consecutive sentences mandatory in every multi-victim case, or create an automatic exception to guideline ranges. It concerns criminal sentence, not professional disciplinary sanctions, civil liability or institutional responsibility.
8. Conclusion
The Court of Appeal upheld the sentencing approach and refused renewed permission to appeal. The 13-year term proportionately reflected repeated sexual offending, grave misuse of professional trust and distinct harm to seven vulnerable clients.
The judgment’s central lesson is that totality must balance restraint against proper recognition of the whole criminality. Neither the physical description of individual assaults nor substantial personal mitigation can be assessed in isolation from the exploitation that made the offending possible.