Calling for a Higher Maximum Sentence in Child Abduction Cases
| Author | Vanessa Bettinson |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2012.76.2.758 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
Court of Appeal
Calling for a Higher Maximum Sentence in Child
Abduction Cases
R v Kayani; R vSolliman [2011] EWCA Crim 2871
Keywords Child abduction; Sentencing; Child welfare; Deterrence
Both of these cases involved appeals against sentences by fathers for the
offence of child abduction under s. 1 of the Child Abduction Act 1984.
Kayani was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment after giving a late
guilty plea to the offence of child abduction. A Pakistani man, he
married his British wife and had two sons during the course of the
marriage. When the marriage deteriorated the parties separated, with
Kayani stating that if his wife left him he would take the children and
return to Pakistan (at [20]). Following private court proceedings, an
interim measure was put into place prohibiting him from taking the
children out of their mother’s control. Subsequently contact arrange-
ments were made by a court order that included a condition being
placed on Kayani to leave his passport with the children’s mother whilst
he had contact with the children. Initially he appeared to comply with
the court order. However, he obtained a replacement UK passport after
falsely claiming that his original passport had been stolen. He also
obtained Pakistani passports for the two children without the mother’s
knowledge. During an extended period of contact with the children in
January 2000, Kayani flew to Pakistan with the children using his falsely
claimed passport and new Pakistani passports for his sons. The mother
never saw her sons again, despite making every effort to find them and
taking out court proceedings in Lahore. Kayani returned with the
children in 2009 without contacting the mother, but was discovered
through a routine search of the missing persons register (at [27]).
During police interviews the sons refused to respond without the pres-
ence of their father or his solicitor and the appellant ‘was unrepentant’
and willing to use his sons to protect himself from the consequences of
what he had done (at [28]). The sons continued to refuse to have contact
with their mother and in practical terms the court accepted that ‘she
ha[d] lost them forever’ (at [29]).
Kayani appealed against his sentence for the offence of child abduc-
tion arguing that the sentencing judge had erred in law. First, the judge
had not taken into sufficient consideration the fact that the father was
the sole carer of the children. This was an inappropriate case to pass a
deterrent sentence and in addition such a sentence amounted to a
violation of the children’s right to respect for family life contrary to
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (at [32]).
Solliman was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment following his
conviction for three counts of child abduction in February 2011. He left
the UK in 2002 after obtaining false travel documents in a false name.
117The Journal of Criminal Law (2012) 76 JCL 117–129
doi:10.1350/jcla.2012.76.2.758
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