Peter Andrew Holmes v R

For the historic offence under section 1(1) of the Indecency with Children Act 1960, gross indecency has an ordinary meaning and does not require an exhaustive legal definition. Physical contact is not a necessary condition. The jury must decide the issue from the context and all relevant circumstances, including whether the defendant acted for sexual satisfaction.

Conduct which requires a child to be naked or partially undressed for the defendant’s sexual gratification may be capable of amounting to gross indecency. In sentencing multiple historic sexual offences, the court must identify a just and proportionate total sentence. There is no inflexible rule requiring sentences to be either consecutive or concurrent.

The appellant, a former boarding-school teacher, was tried at Bradford Crown Court for historic sexual offending against pupils aged under 14. On 30 May 2022, he was convicted of 29 counts comprising indecent assaults and offences of indecency with a child. The offending involved at least 50 incidents against 18 complainants. He received an overall sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment on 16 September 2022.

He appealed against conviction on the basis that the alleged acts could not amount to gross indecency, that the jury had been misdirected, and that the remaining convictions were thereby unsafe. He also appealed against sentence, challenging the use of consecutive sentences. The central issue was whether the evidence and directions properly left the historic gross-indecency counts to the jury.

Appeals against conviction and sentence dismissed.

1. The court rejected the submission that gross indecency required intercrural contact, masturbation or oral-genital contact. It declined to formulate an exhaustive definition. The expression had an ordinary meaning, and its boundaries had been sufficiently identified by authority. In particular, physical contact was not essential: R v Hunt showed that a grossly indecent exhibition could suffice.

2. The evidence was capable of supporting findings of gross indecency. A jury could find that, for the appellant’s sexual satisfaction, he directed boys to row naked or partially undressed, to expose their buttocks while rowing, to massage him while partially undressed, or to be naked while he watched or massaged them. The judge was therefore entitled to reject the relevant submissions of no case to answer.

3. The directions correctly required the jury to be sure that the alleged acts occurred, that they involved the relevant child, and that they were acts of gross indecency in their context and circumstances. The jury also had to be sure that the appellant derived sexual satisfaction from the act relied upon. There was no misdirection and no basis to regard any verdict as unsafe.

4. The appellant had to be sentenced under the historic statutory maxima, with measured regard to comparable modern sentencing guidance. Applying totality, the judge was entitled to conclude that 12 years’ imprisonment was just and proportionate for sustained offending by a teacher against 18 children in serious breach of trust. Having fixed that total, the judge could structure individual sentences consecutively and concurrently to achieve it. The mistaken categorisation of one count did not make that approach wrong in principle.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): By [2023] EWCA Crim 58, dismissed the appeals against conviction and sentence.
• Bradford Crown Court: The appellant was convicted on 29 counts on 30 May 2022 and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment on 16 September 2022.