- CONTENT WARNING: Child sexual abuse and rape
A legal bid to increase the “unduly lenient” prison sentence of a child rapist has been rejected by the court of appeal.
Earlier this month, openDemocracy reported how Jessica* faced a 22-year fight for justice from the British military after she reported Martin Roberts sexually abused and raped her when she was growing up on an army base in Germany.
Roberts, who was 16 at the time of the attacks, was sentenced in July for multiple charges of indecent conduct with a child and one charge of raping a seven-year-old. He was jailed for just two years, with another two years to be served on licence.
As the crimes were committed in the 1980s, Roberts’ sentence reflected the legal norms of that period.
Jessica has suffered lifelong trauma since the abuse, which took place in 1985 when her and Roberts’ fathers were serving in the British Army. She first reported it to the military in 2002 but says she was let down and ignored.
Although the abuse stopped around the time Roberts himself joined the army, he was still subject to military law as a dependent of a serving member of the armed forces who lived on a military estate at the time of his offending.
Yet Jessica told openDemocracy that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) “could not get away from me fast enough”.
It was not until 2021, almost 20 years after she reported the abuse, that the MoD took action to arrest Roberts, who was found guilty of eight counts of indecency with a child and one count of rape.
Two days after we reported Jessica’s story, a panel of judges – Lord Justice Holroyde, Justice Morris and Justice Foster – ruled against an appeal by the solicitor general to increase the sentence.
Bulford Military Court Centre in Wiltshire, south-west England, heard how it was a “historic first” for the court of appeal to hear a case outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
Roberts, now 55, appeared at the appeal via a video link from HMP Risley, in Cheshire, wearing a grey sweater.
The counsel for the attorney general, Jonathan Polnay KC, argued that there were numerous aggravating factors that should lead to a higher sentence. “Most obvious,” he said, “is that the victim was seven” and therefore “this was not an offence committed by equals in age”.
Polnay further argued that the rape was a culmination of serious sexual offences committed over an extended period of time. Roberts had forcibly kissed Jessica and forced her to masturbate him before going on to orally penetrate her, penetrating her vagina with a candle, and raping her.
After the oral penetration and vaginal rapes, Jessica cried and ran away, while Roberts taunted her in a degrading manner.
That he abused her while in a position of trust, as Jessica’s babysitter in her own home, Polnay added, was a further aggravating factor.
Polnay cited a similar case where the victim – referred to only as ‘SJ’ – was nine years old and the perpetrator older than 16, where the man was jailed for a significantly longer period.
But these arguments were rejected by the defence barrister Fiona Pencheon, who claimed the offences committed against SJ had been more serious and degrading than those Roberts committed against Jessica.
Pencheon argued that SJ’s case involved oral penetration and the use of sex toys, although this failed to recognise that Roberts had used a long candle to assault his victim.
She also claimed that unlike in the SJ case, Roberts’ rapes were not persistent. While it is correct to say that Roberts only vaginally raped Jessica on one occasion, his offending was persistent and increased in severity over time.
The line from the defence was not a surprise. During the July sentencing, Pencheon argued that the attack was “only just a rape” – an intervention rejected by Judge Advocate General Smith.
Pencheon appealed to the judges to recognise “the relevant factor” of how Roberts has conducted himself since his offences, and how beyond a one-week sentence for theft when he was serving in the army, he had no other convictions.
She also said that his family currently live in Germany, including a grandchild he has never met, making it difficult for them to make the journey to visit him in prison.
While the judges acknowledged the life-long harm to Jessica caused by Roberts’ offending, they agreed with the defence that it was “relevant to give some weight to the fact that the offender is sentenced to imprisonment in circumstances more difficult for him.”
They further agreed that the offences in the case offered by Polnay as a comparison were more severe, and therefore they saw “no arguable grounds for saying the total sentence was so lenient that this court should interfere.”
“This always had the odds weighted towards the original sentence,” Jessica told openDemocracy after the hearing. “I’m still glad I went for it, as I wasn’t the only one who thought it was low and he still had to get up off his chair and go back to his cell.
“I am glad I went for it and maybe it will make others feel they can appeal in that setting.”
“The real miscarriage of justice,” she added, “is the over 20-year wait to get that conviction, because of the MoD’s failure to investigate in the first place.”
