R v Gerald Highgate

On an Attorney General reference, a sentence may be lenient without being so lenient that appellate intervention is justified. The court must assess the overall sentence for a sustained campaign of historic sexual offending, including the number of victims, abuse of trust, harm caused and totality. Historic maximum sentences may constrain individual counts, but do not prevent a longer aggregate sentence where consecutive terms could properly be structured.

The sentencing judge’s direct knowledge of the trial, and offender-specific mitigation including age, ill health and the effect of custody, may nevertheless justify leaving a lenient sentence undisturbed.

The Attorney General sought leave to refer, as unduly lenient, an overall sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment imposed after R v Gerald Highgate was convicted of 26 counts of indecent assault and four counts of indecency with a child. The offences involved eight boys, were committed between about 1966 and 2000, and included grooming and serious breaches of trust.

The Attorney General submitted that the sentencing judge had insufficiently reflected the number of victims, the duration and seriousness of the offending, and totality. The respondent relied on his age, ill health, his wife’s dependence on him, and the sentencing judge’s conduct of the trial. The central issue was whether the overall sentence was so lenient as to require intervention.

1. Leave was granted, but the Attorney General’s reference was dismissed. The court held that the points advanced by the Attorney General merited review. It nevertheless concluded that the 10-year sentence, although lenient, was not so lenient that it ought to interfere.
2. The offending was very serious. It continued for 34 years, involved eight separate victims, grooming, breaches of trust and real long-term harm. The sentencing judge had correctly identified the modern equivalent starting points for the individual offences.
3. The principal issue was the adequacy of the aggregate sentence. The historic maximum penalties under Sexual Offences Act 1956 and Indecency with Children Act 1960 imposed inherent limits on individual counts. However, the court accepted that the sentences could have been restructured, including by consecutive terms, to produce a longer overall term.
4. Intervention was not justified in the respondent’s particular circumstances. The trial judge was best placed to assess him and the effect of custody. He was 83, suffered from significant physical illness, and had previously supported his wife following her stroke. Those matters entitled the court to leave the sentence undisturbed despite its leniency.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): on an Attorney General reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, granted leave but dismissed the reference: [2022] EWCA Crim 1741.
• Trial court: following conviction on 22 September 2022, imposed an overall sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment on 23 September 2022.