In court
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505231197859 |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
In court
Nigel Stone, Visiting Fellow in the School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, reviews
recent appeal judgments and other judicial developments that inform sentencing and early
release.
Sexual Harm
Photographer’s assault of naked model: Assessing harm
Aged in his early 40s, without previous convictions and an amateur photographer,
V. arranged to take pictures of C., a professional model, in her underwear and
naked, at her home. While there he sought her permission to remove his trousers
on the pretext of feeling very hot and having a medical condition, subsequently
making comments about her breasts and asking about her sex life, then cupping
one of her breasts with his hand. Though she slapped his hand away and reminding
him that this was totally inappropriate, he subjected her to a prolonged embrace at
the conclusion of the session while she was still naked.
On V.’s conviction of sexual assault following contested trial the Crown Court con-
sidered victim statements from C. and her husband, indicating that some 30 months
later she continued to be badly affected by the experience, experiencing depression
and other features of impaired mental health such as paranoia. She had tried to
change her appearance so she looked ‘as least feminine as possible’. She continued
to work as a model at her home but had lost work because she would do so only
when her husband was present. A PSR (pre-sentence report) assessed V.as a low
risk of further offending, likely to benefit from a programme addressing sexual
offending and suitable for a community order.
The judge placed the offence into category 1A of the relevant definitive guideline
(Sexual Offences, 2013): category 1 harm because C had suffered severe psycho-
logical harm (SPH) and category A culpability because it involved abuse of trust. The
starting point was therefore 4 years’custody, with a range between three and 7
years. V. appealed against 3 years’imprisonment, arguing that neither of those
factors applied and thus the offence merited a significantly shorter sentence and
should have been suspended.
Addressing first the question of harm, the Court of Appeal reiterated that expert
evidence is not a necessary pre-requisite of making a finding of SPH; that is not a
medical or clinical decision but a factual assessment whether the victim had
The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2023, Vol. 70(3) 308–319
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505231197859
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
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