A London, UK appeal court has sentenced a Nigerian man to three years in jail for physically abusing his nine-year-old son.
The 66-year-old criminal initially escaped with 22 months in prison at the end of his trial at Crown Court in Woolwich, south-east London, which the government disagreed with.
Following the government’s appeal against the lower court ruling, the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal for England and Wales in London raised the sentence to three years’ imprisonment.
“The sentence of 22 months in prison will be annulled and replaced by a sentence of three years in prison,” ordered the Court of Appeal in its judgment issued on December 22, 2022.
Woolwich Magistrate Court had sentenced the offender to a suspended sentence order, which included a 22-month prison term, suspended for 12 months, with a two-month electronic curfew between 7:00 p.m. 07:00 a.m.
He was also ordered to pay £500 in compensation to his son, whose name was withheld by the court due to his age, with costs coming to £250. A victim surcharge would also apply, i.e. a fine, although not the amount was disclosed.
The names of all parties connected to the case and the part of London where the crime was allegedly committed were not given in the court’s judgment, a copy of which was obtained by Newslodge. The court withheld the names because the case revolves around a child.
The UK government, through the Solicitor General for England and Wales, appealed against the judgment imposed by Woolwich Crown Court, describing it as unduly lenient.
It held that the first instance court, when imposing a 22-month custodial sentence, did not consider “any aggravating factor that would increase the seriousness of the offence.”
As a step
The offender was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and moved to the UK in 1990.
At the time of this offence, he was living in London with his wife, 17-year-old stepdaughter, and their two biological children, the victim and her sister. His wife also had two adult children who did not live with them.
His wife, the victim’s mother, during the lockdown when the school-age children had migrated to online classes, was informed that the victim had not attended his online school classes for two days. As a result, she forbade him to play computer games and told her father about the development.
On January 22, 2021, he left home to visit his eldest son, leaving the victim with his sisters. Her father came home from work to find the victim using the computer.
According to court documents, the father repeatedly hit him on the back with sticks or metal rods, which he took from a basket next to the television in the living room. He also used his belt repeatedly to hit him on the back, arms, and shoulders.
The nine-year-old son cried very hard; one of his sisters witnessed the assault, while the other, who was upstairs at the time, heard his screams.
“When the physical assault was over, the offender told E to hold a metal stick over his head and face the garden. He remained in this stress position for about two hours,” the court said.
‘E’, in this case, was the victim.
Two days later, the mother came home to find her son in pain.
“She saw the marks on his body. She confronted the attacker, who admitted what she had done at the time but did not accept that her actions were wrong.”
She took her son to the hospital, where he was found to have multiple horizontal bruises on his back and arms, linear in appearance and consistent with the use of a metal stick-like implement. He also had bruises on his shoulders and head, as well as cuts on his hands.
The metal sticks used by the offender were handed over to the police and the father was arrested on January 25, 2021.
He said at the time that he felt a lot of remorse but, when interviewed, he denied having attacked the child, his son or one of his children with a stick or a belt and denied having put him in a stressed position.
Instead, he blamed his wife. She said that she had encouraged the children to fabricate accusations against her because she was upset with him about citizenship and her family’s entry into this country.
The father was charged and placed on bail with conditions including a qualified (electronically controlled) curfew.
He pleaded not guilty throughout the entire pre-trial period, and the trial began on June 10, 2021 with cross-examination of the children.
The case was listed for a rehearing between June 6 and June 10, 2022. The children’s recorded testimony was shown to the jury and the mother gave live testimony.
After the prosecution closed her case, the mother discovered text messages that her husband, the convict, had sent her in January 2021 warning her and the victim not to say anything about what happened.
On June 10, 2022, he pleaded guilty to cruelty to a person under the age of 16 and was sentenced on October 12, 2022 by Woolwich Crown Court.
Argument from the Attorney General
The Attorney General’s Office, through its lawyer, B. Lloyd, opposed the sentence handed down by the court of first instance.
While acknowledging that the judge correctly placed the crime in the correct category of the relevant sentencing guideline, he insisted that it deserved a prison sentence much longer than 22 months.
He noted that the trial judge acknowledged that there was evidence during the trial of assault or general abusive behavior involving other children in the family, but did not count it as an aggravating factor against the offender.
“In short, the downward adjustment to 22 months, taking into account all the aggravating and mitigating factors, was simply too large,” Mr Lloyd told the Court of Appeal in making a case for a longer sentence. “It did not reflect the overall seriousness of this crime.”
Defending
But the defense lawyer, N. Carter, justified the sentence imposed by the investigating judge.
Carter said the judge followed a considered and balanced approach and the final sentence he imposed could not be said to be unduly lenient.
He argued that the offender did not have a willful disregard for his son’s well-being, but wanted to instill in him proper standards.
“Her offense was not sadistic or cruel in nature. Otherwise, the victim and her siblings were clearly well cared for and provided for. All this, added to the good character of the offender, justified the prison sentence of 22 months, ”he argued.
Judgment of the Court of Appeal
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal said that the trial Crown Court in Woolwich he overlooked “multiple aggravating factors” in imposing his sentence.
“First, and significantly, was the presence of other children. This was a significant factor in the events here, as an eight-year-old brother was in the room when the crime occurred and another was in a position to listen to the victim’s anguish. This was to witness the punishment of a child, instilling fear in others of similar treatment as far as they were concerned,” the three-member panel wrote in their sentencing.
According to the court, there was also a failure to seek medical help and the offender wrongly sought to blame others.
There was also an attempt to hide his offense through text messages sent to his wife, the court said.
The panel noted that, in light of Judge Woolwich’s sentencing comments, the judge appears to have been concerned with how to recognize the time the offender spent in curfew.
“The judge should not have been distracted by that factor, at least at first; it was not relevant to the question of determining the correct length of a custodial sentence,” the panel wrote.
Having heard arguments from both sides, the court held that the offense warranted a custodial sentence of not less than three years, adding that there was no adequate basis for the judge to have awarded a custodial sentence outside the range of “category 2A offence”.
“For all these reasons, and seen like this, the term that the Judge imposed was not only lenient but also improper,” he said.