R Ian William Rimmer v Secretary of State for Justice National Probation Service in Wales (Interested Party)

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeMr Justice Dove
Judgment Date22 February 2016
Neutral Citation[2016] EWHC 329 (Admin)
Docket NumberCase No: CO/3082/2015
CourtQueen's Bench Division (Administrative Court)
Date22 February 2016

[2016] EWHC 329 (Admin)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

ADMINISTRATIVE COURT (CARDIFF)

Cardiff Civil and Family Justice Centre,

2 Park Street, Cardiff, CF10 1ET

(handed down at the RCJ)

Before:

Mr Justice Dove

Case No: CO/3082/2015

Between:
The Queen (on the application of) Ian William Rimmer
Claimant
and
Secretary of State for Justice
Defendant

and

National Probation Service in Wales
Interested Party

Ian William Rimmer ( acting in person) for the Claimant

Fraser Campbell (instructed by Government Legal Department) for the Defendant

The Interested Party was not represented at the hearing

Hearing date: 18 th January 2016

Mr Justice Dove

Introduction

1

The claimant's claim for judicial review is based upon his contention that the conditions imposed upon his licence on release from prison as part of an extended sentence of four years imprisonment together with four years extended licence period are unlawful. The history of his case is as follows.

2

In 1975 the claimant was married for a brief period. After three months of marriage he was ejected from the matrimonial home. He discovered that his then wife's former boyfriend had moved back in with her. Shortly after this he was arrested and charged with indecent assault upon his then wife's 12-year-old daughter. The nature of the allegation was that he had touched her breast over her clothing. During the investigation by the police he signed a confession which had been written for him. He states in his evidence that he did so as he was threatened by his then wife's former boyfriend (with whom she was then living) with assault and also the threat that he would be forced to pay her maintenance. He was also advised that by pleading guilty he would create grounds for divorce so that he would not have to wait five years to be able to divorce her.

3

In my view, it is fair to observe that his attitude to his responsibility for this offence is to some extent ambivalent. In his submissions at the hearing the claimant stated that he was unable to recall deliberately touching his stepdaughter in the manner alleged. He pointed out that it was a very stressful and confusing period of his life. By contrast, in a letter he wrote on 18 th October 2008 he stated as follows:

"My 1976 conviction was for indecent assault on a 13yo step daughter. This occurred in a marriage where I was out of my depth. My wife was much older than me (by 13 years) and I became a stepfather to 5 children. It only lasted a few months before we separated. Everything became very confused, the daughter had a crush and I acted inappropriately. I touched her on the breast over the clothes and immediately stopped, however the damage had been done and the incident was referred to the police by my wife. I pleaded guilty at Magistrates Court and was given a 12m probation order that was discharged early. This offence has periodically caused me heartache and problems over the years. Despite it occurring over 32 years ago it continues to haunt me."

4

The claimant met his present wife in late 1976 and they married on 19 th August 1978. They have two daughters. Sadly, in around 2001, one of their daughters became addicted to heroin and on 21 st January 2002 the claimant and his wife obtained a residence order in relation to his grandson for whom they assumed parental responsibility at that time. The claimant, his wife and daughters and his grandson lived together at their family home without incident until summer 2008.

5

On 3 rd August 2008 the claimant was arrested on suspicion of having made indecent images of children. A number of separate hard drives were found at the claimant's home and searched. A detailed examination of one of the hard drives yielded 94,424 undeleted indecent images of children, of which 1,627 were grade five (or the most serious kind of images) in terms of their content. At the time of their investigation the claimant had advised the police that he had been accessing such images for the previous ten years prior to his arrest. In his submissions the claimant said that this suggestion might not have been precisely accurate, but it was an estimate of the longest period of time over which he could have been accessing this material. The investigations demonstrated that his main method of obtaining the images was downloading them by peer-to-peer system transfer in which the contents of hard drives were exchanged. The claimant was convicted on 27 th November 2008 of 17 counts of making indecent images of children and five counts of possession of indecent images of children. He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

6

The claimant was released from this term of imprisonment on 20 th March 2009. At a routine inspection of his bed and breakfast accommodation on 1 st May 2009 he was found to have a USB memory stick on which there were indecent images of children. The claimant told the police that he had downloaded these images by using his daughter's computer, which was situated in the family home, when he had been visiting there. As a result of this discovery he was recalled to prison and charged and convicted of five accounts of making indecent images of children. As a result of these convictions he was sentenced on 24 th April 2010 to four years imprisonment with an extended licence period of four years at the Crown Court at Swansea.

7

Prior to sentence being passed in 2009, in a report commissioned from the Caswell Clinic, the claimant was said to be not suffering from mental illness but rather that he had a disorder, namely paedophilia, together with reactive depression caused by stress. During the course of his submissions the claimant observed that this assessment was simply a clinical assessment and was not a specific evaluation of the prospects of him undertaking further sexual offences. In relation to the offence of which he was convicted the claimant remains adamant that he is not guilty. He contends that the images which were on the USB memory stick were not of children but of older individuals. He has an application pending with the Criminal Cases Review Board seeking to obtain their support in an application to the Court of Appeal to appeal against this conviction. Notwithstanding this application, as matters stand the conviction and sentence are matters of record and must form a part of the factual basis for the purposes of this judicial review.

8

On 8 th June 2012 the claimant was released on licence. The conditions placed on the licence have been through several iterations. The licence has, indeed, changed since these proceedings were issued on 1 st July 2015. The present form of the licence is one which was issued and dated 30 th July 2015. Notwithstanding this reissuing of the licence the conditions which are controversial for the purposes of these proceedings remain in force. Insofar as there were conditions which were controversial which have now been removed from the licence they are, in my view, only of peripheral relevance to the merits of the claimant's case. So far as material, the conditions provide as follows and prevent the following activities:

"vii. To own or use (directly or indirectly) a computer, data storage device or other electronic device (including an internet-enabled mobile telephone) for internet access, instant messaging, or other computer and online usage, only as allowed by your supervising officer. You must not delete the usage history of any such devices that you have used, and you must allow your supervising officer and/or the police to have access to them, which may include removing them in order to conduct technical checks to establish usage;

viii. To make any computer, data storage device or other electronic device (including an internet-enabled mobile telephone) which may be used for internet access, instant messaging, or other computer and online usage, available for the installation of monitoring software by your supervising officer and/or the police, and not to disrupt or disable the monitoring software once installed;

ix. Not to own or possess more than one mobile phone or SIM card without the prior approval of your supervising officer and to provide your supervising officer with details of that mobile telephone, including the IMEI number and the SIM card that you possess;

x. To make any device that you own or possess that is capable of making or storing digital images (including a digital camera and a mobile phone with a camera function) available for inspection on request by your supervising officer and/or a police officer;

xi. Not to own or use a non-digital camera without the prior approval of your supervising officer;

xii. Not to own or use a standalone digital camera without the prior approval of your supervising officer;

xiii. Not to reside (not even to stay for one night) in the same household as any child under the age of 16 without the prior approval of your supervising officer;

xiv. Not to seek to approach or communicate with [the claimant's grandchildren] without the prior approval of your supervising officer and / or Carmarthenshire Social Services;

xv. Not to have unsupervised contact with any children under the age of 16 without the prior approval of your supervising officer and / or Carmarthen Social Services Department except where the contact is inadvertent and not reasonably avoidable in the course of lawful daily life;

xvi. To comply with any requirements specified by your supervising officer for the purpose of ensuring that you address your sexual offending behaviour problems;

xvii. Not to enter the house at [redacted] and not to enter within any parts of the grounds thereof without the prior approval...

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