COURT: I have to sentence you for rape and two assaults occasioning actual bodily harm to the same victim. The jury convicted you of the rape. You pleaded guilty to the two assaults which preceded the rape.
I will not forget that the background to your crimes was one of a month-long boyfriend/girlfriend sexual relationship in which the two of you had genuine affection for each other. You were both 19 years old at the time. I can understand your anguish when she wanted to break off the relationship. I can appreciate the pain when you wanted her so much and she no longer wanted you. It is worth remembering that is a situation faced by many a young man.
I can even see how that background may have led you to striking out at her in anger, although I do remember the evidence that you engineered her presence at a lonely spot, where her screams for help went unheard, by false pretences.
Having said that, it is the case that your conduct thereafter was unforgivable, for the first assault upon her went beyond a sudden loss of control. From the extent of her injuries, and some 40 sites of bruising or abrasion were found by the pathologist, and from her description of the violence, you pressed on deliberately to hurt her. You used a closed fist and you went for her head and body as well as choking her on the ground. I have no doubt that she feared for her life, as she testified.
There was a time between the assaults when you calmed down. The realisation of what you had done to her should have been shocking and should have prevented any prospect of repetition. Yet within an hour, you attacked her again, using a mobile telephone to strike her as well this time.
Whilst I will not increase your sentence because of it, it is part of the picture that by only 19, you had two previous convictions for assault. I do not know how serious they were, but even if they were not particularly serious assaults in themselves, the fact is they indicate you have some propensity to violence.
It is clear that you decided to have sex with her, and you used your physical dominance and threats to her and her family to achieve it, knowing it was against her will. You forced her submission. The threats to set her family on fire were particularly nasty.
It was the case that the jury found you not guilty on Counts 3 and 5, which alleged, respectively, an attempt at non‑consensual buggery at the time of the first rape, and the second rape occurring later, at her home.
I have thought hard whether the verdicts of not guilty can mitigate the matters on which I do have to sentence you. The acquittal of the attempted buggery is readily explicable in terms of accuracy, the jury reasonably entertaining a doubt as to your exact intention. It provides you no succour in assessing the gravity of the rape.
Given the way the case was put to the jury, I have no doubt that the majority believed her good faith as to what happened at your home.
As regards the acquittal concerning the sexual intercourse that took place later at her home, I cannot conceive that the majority of the jury would have judged she spoke in bad faith, for otherwise they would not have been sure in relation to the first rape.
There were two elements at work in the evidence which must have taken the attention of the jury in their task of deciding between the two of you. One was the extent of her injuries and how nearly they preceded the sexual intercourse at your home. The second was her failure to call for help despite opportunities to do so. I can see how those two factors were given weight by the jury and how the injuries were capable of providing stronger corroboration in relation to the first rape, and how the failure to complain became the more potent point as the opportunities for it had grown by the time of the second alleged rape. On that analysis, the acquittal concerning the second allegation of rape provides no mitigation as to the nature and quality of the first and proven allegation of rape.
A point that is available to you in mitigation is this: that the rape of a woman with whom you had had already consensual sex does not have perhaps the abhorrent qualities of rape by a stranger.
Bearing in mind what your counsel has said to me, taken with those matters set out at the commencement of these reasons, I shall take a lower starting point than I otherwise might have done of 5 years’ imprisonment. 6 years’ imprisonment is a start commonly taken for the consideration of sentence in cases like this.
So for the rape on Count 4, you go to prison for 5 years.
For the two assaults, you will go to prison for 12 months concurrently on each of the two Counts 1 and 2.
I have given you a one-third discount for your pleas of guilty. Whilst the assaults obviously played a part in the background to the rape, the violence was separate in place and time. The starting point of 5 years took no account of the assaults beyond setting the scene.
Accordingly, I shall order the two concurrent sentences of 12 months to run consecutively to the sentence on the rape of 5 years, the total being one of 6 years’ imprisonment, which is the total that I judge meets the case for your overall conduct.
The sentence is 6 years. You can go down.
Please refer to CACC139/2013 for the relevant appeal(s) to the Court of Appeal.