As part of its ongoing overhaul of sentencing practice, the Sentencing Council has announced the introduction of new guidelines for all sex offences which will take effect from April 2014. The existing guidance dates from 2004, shortly after the enactment of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
Sentencing for many sex offences has increased with, for instance, a starting point of 15 years in the highest category of a single count of rape. This is a reflection of the tendency of courts in recent years to impose tougher sentences. Also, as with other recently issued sentencing guidelines, there is more focus on the victims of crime.
Reporting of these new guidelines in the media has focussed on the possibility of good character being an aggravating feature of the offence, especially where a famous person relies on his reputation to target a victim. This is perhaps an inevitable consequence of the Operation Yewtree enquiry established in response to the Jimmy Saville revelations.
Particular attention has been paid to the increasing use of technology in the commission of sexual offences, such as social media being employed to make contact with victims, webcams enabling offences to be committed without the parties actually being in the company of each other, and the recording of the offence being viewed as an aggravating factor for the purpose of sentencing.
There has been a huge upsurge in the commission of internet child pornography offences, and the new guidelines shift the focus from numbers of images made or possessed to how the offender has used them.
With regard to historic sexual offences, offenders will be sentenced on the basis of the new guidance but having regard to the law as it was at the time the offences were committed as, for example, maximum sentences have increased over the past half century. Again, this reflects existing sentence practice as exemplified by the Stuart Hall case.
These new guidelines published by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales reflect much of the public concern about these types of offences, and represent a complete change in approach. Sentencing will be tougher; prison sentences have increased markedly.
If you are facing an allegation concerning a sexual offence it is imperative that you seek specialist advice from experienced solicitors who have an excellent, proven track record of success when defending these allegations. See our cases section on our website.
Please contact us by calling us on 020 7387 2032 or complete our online enquiry form here.
Monday’s announcements by Google concerning their new enhanced capabilities when identifying child abuse images have been welcomed all round. However, the real question to ask is: is this really enough when the majority of such images are not found on the internet at all, but within the realms of the ‘deep, dark web’.
To put it frankly, the organised criminal manufacturers and distributors of such material do not use the internet; they use peer to peer websites and messaging, and The Onion Router (TOR).
We have blogged before about the use of the deep web and TOR for criminal activity (13/10/2013, 08/11/2013 and 11/11/2013) and the authorities’ attempts to harness these activities.
Google (and indeed Microsoft) have been working with international investigative authorities for many years to develop strategies to counter the availability of child abuse images on the net, but Monday’s announcements point to enhanced strategies not in place before.
They have had 200 people working on these issues for over three months and have worked closely with Microsoft as well. As a result they now have technology which targets 100,000 search terms associated with the location of such images in 150 languages.
There will also be warnings at the top of search results for 13,000 relevant internet search queries.
Google states that solely relying on algorithms was insufficient; it would be impossible for algorithms to distinguish between legal innocent images of children in the bath/beach/swimming pool with illegal images that still required human input.
If the image is illegal it will leave a unique digital fingerprint which the internet providers/authorities can track.
YouTube will also identify child abuse images and videos, and when identified they will be given a tag which will prevent duplication and sharing of such images.
In conjunction with Google’s announcements, Downing Street has also announced a joint UK/US taskforce (involving their respective intelligence agencies) who will target the ‘deep web’ and the criminal organisations that use it.
The Telegraph (19/11/2013) is of the view that the better way to detect child abuse images is to employ good old fashioned policing methods using technology. This is an approach endorsed by CEOP.
They point to the success of the Canadian authorities with international arrests connected with azovfilms.com, a website based in Toronto, underlining this.
Using software such as The Onion Router (TOR) and peer to peer messaging/websites raises difficulties when it comes to the detection of these deep websites. These mechanisms effectively hide the identities of the users. They swap addresses of those seeking to hide their identities using encryption and in real terms ‘warping’ the true identity (i.e. The Onion Router).
There is certainly going to be a renewed and sustained effort to prosecute those allegedly involved in such criminal behaviour, but it will raise all sorts of difficulties when formally bringing a prosecution with public interest immunity issues and complex technical evidence to be presented to the Court.
If you are facing a criminal investigation or prosecution relating to the issues raised here, you will need genuinely experienced, specialist lawyers. Two of our partners are experts in both cybercrime and sexual offence law. They use leading computer technological experts and specialist barristers when preparing their defence cases. The more complex the case, the better!
Two of our other directors assisted Channel 4 with their news programme on this subject, televised on 18 November 2013.
Please contact us either by calling 020 7387 2032 or completing our online enquiry form here.
A number of new developments concerning the prosecution of child abuse cases and the treatment of child and vulnerable witnesses have been announced:
It seems that over 33,000 child witnesses give evidence every year, though the CPS only prosecute 4–5,000 cases per annum, 75% of which result in conviction.
These announcements come in the same week as CEOP complain that 93% of all individuals caught viewing/downloading paedophilic online pornography are not arrested; last year there were 2,866 suspects and only 192 were detained by police.
If you are affected by any of these issues and would like legal advice, please contact us.
News broke on 14 May 2013 that an elderly former BBC employee, arrested by virtue of the second strand of the Savile Inquiry, has been released from the investigation because there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
He, like the 14 others arrested under Savile, has been identified pending investigation and prior to deciding whether prosecution should be instigated.
This individual was exactly the type of individual which LJ Leveson envisaged when he concluded in his report that arrestees should not be identified before charge. To be frank, that is generally what happens in the vast majority of criminal cases, unless the identity of the individual is leaked.
Historic sexual allegations are sensitive, difficult, delicate cases to investigate and prosecute. The evidence, usually the uncorroborated word of one individual, relies on memories of events many years old. So there is no guarantee that anyone arrested for such an offence will ever be prosecuted, but yet their identity has been revealed to the world in the meantime!
If you are facing such an allegation, you will need solicitors who are not only experts when defending these types of cases and have successful track records, but who will also manage your reputation and defend press inquiries. We are adept at both.
Contact Jeffrey Lewis if you have any queries in connection with these issues.
A package of measures to transform the way the criminal justice system tackles child sexual abuse was announced recently by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.
We thought that we would take a closer look at the proposals, in the wake of a BBC report that more ‘significant’ arrests for sexual abuse are expected in the near future.
Child sexual abuse is, sadly, far from uncommon. According to the latest statistics (2011) from children’s charity the NSPCC, 24.1% of young adults have experienced sexual abuse of some sort during their childhood.
One in six children between the ages of 11 and 17 have experienced sexual abuse at some point, while 9.4% have experienced sexual abuse in the past year, with 15–17 year old girls having experienced the highest rates of abuse over the previous year.
The issue of child sexual abuse has been highlighted by the Jimmy Savile scandal, and the revelation that the late TV presenter may have committed over 200 sexual offences over a 54 year period.
Subsequent investigations have led to other arrests for historic sexual abuse, and these investigations are continuing.
But the Savile affair is not the only major case to have raised awareness about the sexual abuse of children. In May last year nine men were convicted of grooming and sexually exploiting a number of young girls in Rochdale, while only last week eight men were arrested at various addresses in London and Hertfordshire, suspected of sexually exploiting one young girl.
According to Keir Starmer, while the recent successful prosecutions demonstrate the effort that has been put in to dealing with sexual abuse cases, the past twelve months “raise fundamental questions about the way in which we investigate and prosecute sexual offences, particularly those involving children”.
These include:
In response, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) have agreed a package of measures, including:
“We cannot afford another Savile moment in five or ten years time,” said Mr Starmer. “Whatever approach is now agreed, it has to be fully informed, coherent, consistently applied across the country and able to withstand the test of time.”
For specialist criminal defence for sexual offences in London, please click here to read more or contact Jeffrey Lewis or Siobhain Egan on 020 7387 2032.
The first ever study by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into so-called false allegations of rape and domestic violence was published last week by Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
The report, which examines a 17-month period, shows that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are perhaps more rare than previously thought, and that in only a very small number of cases was it considered that there was sufficient evidence and that it was in the public interest to prosecute a person suspected of making a false allegation of rape or domestic violence.
This publication is part of a wider programme of work for the CPS to improve its handling of cases involving violence against women and girls.
“Victims of rape and domestic violence must not be deterred from reporting the abuse they have suffered. In recent years we have worked hard to dispel the damaging myths and stereotypes that are associated with these cases,” said Mr Starmer. “One such misplaced belief is that false allegations of rape and domestic violence are rife. This report presents a more accurate picture.”
The DPP published new legal guidance on perverting the course of justice in July 2011 and, for a period of 17 months, required CPS areas to refer all cases involving an allegedly false allegation of rape, domestic violence or both to him to consider.
During the period covered by the report, there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape but only 35 for making false allegations of rape. There were 111,891 prosecutions for domestic violence, but only six for making false allegations of domestic violence. There were a further three people charged with making false allegations of both rape and domestic violence.
The report also shed light on the context within which false allegations were made. According to Mr Starmer, a significant number of these cases involved young, often vulnerable people, and sometimes even children.
“Around half of the cases involved people aged 21 and under, and some involved people with mental health difficulties,” he said. “From the cases we have analysed, the indication is that it is therefore extremely rare that a suspect deliberately makes a false allegation of rape or domestic violence purely out of malice. It is within this context that the issue should be viewed, so that myths and stereotypes around these cases are not able to take hold.”
For specialist criminal defence for sexual offences in London, please click here or contact Jeffrey Lewis or Siobhain Egan on 020 7387 2032.
Barnardo’s children’s charity dealt with 1,452 sexually exploited children in the UK last year – an increase of 22% – and has seen a 37% increase in cases over the past three years. Last week it called for more to be done to protect young people from being internally trafficked for sex.
Taking September 2012 as an example, Barnardo’s says that the number of young people it dealt with who had been trafficked within the country rose by 84% – from 76 to 140 children year on year.
“Domestic trafficking of children for sex is a sophisticated type of exploitation, a sinister form of organised violation through networks of criminals,” said Barnardo’s chief executive Anne Marie Carrie.
“Nobody currently knows the full extent of these crimes because of their hidden nature, but what we do know is that every time we open a new service for victims it quickly becomes fully subscribed,” she warned. “If we are to save children from suffering for years at the hands of their abusers, more must be done by the authorities to identify victims of child sexual exploitation who are being internally trafficked and to stop this activity earlier on.”
Barnardo’s is calling for:
If you are the subject of a false allegation regarding sexual offences please contact our defence lawyers in London. Please see here for more information.
Read more on the Barnardos press release here.