Summary of Judgment — Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)

Factual and Procedural Background

The Appellant was convicted after a trial in the Crown Court at The City on 10 February 2025 of nine counts of historic sexual offending. On 13 June 2025 the trial judge (Judge Grimshaw) imposed an overall sentence of 12 years' imprisonment made up of specified terms for each count, all to run concurrently. The Appellant appealed by leave of a single judge. The Victim elected to waive lifelong anonymity. The Victim and the Appellant were adopted into the same family and brought up as brother and sister but were not blood relations. The offending took place over a period when the Victim was aged between 12 and 16 and the Appellant between 14 and 19, comprising repeated rapes occurring in the family home and holiday home. The Victim's written Victim Personal Statements described significant long‑term psychological and physical effects. The Court of Appeal heard the appeal on 11 June 2026, with the panel led by Judge Warby and with Judge O'Farrell delivering the judgment.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the sentencing judge erred in categorising the offending (in particular whether harm was correctly placed in category 2).
2. Whether the sentencing judge failed to give sufficient effect to the principle of totality when imposing the overall sentence.
3. Whether the sentencing judge gave insufficient weight to the Appellant's personal mitigation, rendering the total sentence manifestly excessive.

Arguments of the Parties

Appellant's Arguments

• Attorney Sullivan submitted that the judge was wrong to find severe psychological harm (category 2) on the basis of the Victim Impact Statements and that the evidence did not show harm significantly greater than is typically expected for the offences.
• It was argued that the judge had placed count 2 (sexual intercourse with a girl under 13) at a higher category because of alleged grooming which, the Appellant said, was unsupported by the evidence.
• Attorney Sullivan submitted that insufficient weight was given to totality, risking double‑counting the harm finding across multiple counts and inflating the overall sentence.
• He further submitted that the sentencing judge had not sufficiently marked the Appellant's personal mitigation (youth at time of offending, lack of previous convictions, long period without offending, caring responsibilities, age and health).

Prosecution's/Respondent's Arguments

• The prosecution had advanced that the equivalent offence for count 2 could be treated as rape of a child under 13 (a submission which the trial judge rejected for sentencing purposes because count 2 was not charged as rape on the indictment).
• The prosecution had also submitted that the sibling relationship gave rise to abuse of trust (a submission rejected by the judge and addressed by reference to authority).

Table of Precedents Cited

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court reviewed the sentencing exercise carried out by the trial judge. The judge recognised the historic nature of the offending and that the applicable sentencing regime at the date of sentence had to respect the maximum penalties in force at the dates of the offences. The indictment comprised one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 and eight counts of rape covering discrete years; the judge treated each pair of counts per year as reflecting multiple rapes and sentenced on the basis of two rapes per relevant year.

The trial judge followed the Ahmed approach where offending spans juvenile and adult periods, selecting the most serious adult offence (count 10) as the lead and imposing concurrent sentences for earlier offences. The judge categorised culpability for the lead count as category B and assessed harm as category 2, relying on the Victim Impact Statements which detailed severe and lasting psychological harm. The judge determined a category 2B rape starting point of eight years (range seven to nine years) and identified aggravating features: targeted offending, the Victim's vulnerability due to age, ejaculation, and the domestic locations of assaults.

The judge gave substantial weight to personal mitigation: the Appellant's young age and immaturity at the time of many offences, absence of previous convictions, long period without offending, character references, caring responsibilities, and current age and health. He tempered mitigation weight because of the seriousness of the offences. Balancing aggravation and mitigation, the judge fixed a term of 12 years on count 10 to reflect overall criminality and made other sentences concurrent, with reductions on those counts to reflect age‑related mitigation on a sliding scale. The court found no error in the judge's assessment of harm, his totality analysis, or his treatment of mitigation.

The Court of Appeal additionally corrected an error in the sentencing record: a victim surcharge had been imposed but, because the earliest offence predated the statutory provision authorising a surcharge, the surcharge order was quashed.

Holding and Implications

Appeal dismissed. The Court of Appeal concluded that the sentencing judge's categorisation of harm, application of totality, and assessment of personal mitigation were not erroneous and that the overall sentence of 12 years' imprisonment was not manifestly excessive. The court quashed the victim surcharge order because the offences predated the statutory basis for imposing a surcharge.

Direct consequences: the Appellant's 12‑year custodial sentence stands; the victim surcharge is quashed. The judgment does not purport to establish any new legal precedent beyond applying existing authorities to the facts of this case.