The Court of Criminal Appeal has upheld the one year jail sentence being served by an 80-year-old man who repeatedly raped and abused a young girl. The DPP challenged the sentence as being too lenient.

The elderly man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty on day 3 of his trial to two counts of sexual assault and one count of orally raping a girl in Tipperary on dates between 1995 and 1998.

He had been facing 58 charges of abuse at the Central Criminal Court trial, including rape. Mr. Justice Garrett Sheehan factored in his age and ill health when in December last he imposed a sentence of 6 years in prison with 5 years suspended.

On appeal, David Humphries, BL, for the DPP, argued that the sentence did not acknowledge that the guilty plea had been entered on a ‘full facts’ basis. He said that meant the full circumstances of the case were to be taken into account, that this abuse had begun when the girl was 9 or 10 years old and continued until she was 18.

The fact the accused was elderly and suffered health problems were not unusual in this type of case, he submitted.

'An expression of remorse'

In reply, lawyers for the accused man said there had been an expression of heartfelt remorse at the sentencing hearing and evidence from a psychiatrist that he was unlikely to reoffend.

Barrister Micheal O’Higgins, SC, said the 80-year-old underwent coronary artery bypass surgery as recently as May. The convicted man used walking sticks to get in and out of the court room today.

Handing down the court’s ruling presiding judge, Mr. Justice John McMenamin said ‘the circumstances of this case have a number of very unattractive features’. He noted the accused man ‘exercised a position of dominion over the complainant from a time she was at a very young age up to the time of majority’.

However the court identified no error of principle in the ‘carefully crafted’ decision of the sentencing judge.

Mr. Justice McMenamin stressed that it is not the role of the court to assess whether it would have imposed the same sentence.

He said the circumstances of the case were very unusual and that the court does not see that what arose here will ‘establish any binding precedent’ in future cases.