Sexual communications with a child - Sentence Suspended

Case study summary

Our client was charged with sending sexually explicit messages to a 14-year-old child. He approached us to represent him in this case.

Our expert lawyers were able to persuade a crown court judge to impose a suspended sentence instead of sending him to prison.

Case study

This case concerned an elderly male who had been charged with attempted sexual communication with a minor. He was previously been convicted of minor offences in his youth, but never anything relating to children or sexual offences. As such, our client was understandably terrified at the prospect of receiving a custodial sentence.

Our client was later charged with this offence and approached our firm to represent him. He explained that at the time his mental health had deteriorated due to stress placed on him at work and using alcohol as a coping mechanism.

The case was charged as an attempt because the person our client had been communicating with was in fact a vigilante who was posing as a child online. The vigilante group confronted our client and reported him to the police.

It was clear that our client's medical records would be essential in providing evidence as to his state of mind at the time of the offending, in that they could be used to demonstrate his circumstances at the time. We requested these from his GP and analysed them to find the most useful documents which we could use to demonstrate his condition during the offending period.

These documents showed that our client had approached his doctor about his mental health and raised concerns about how this was affecting him. We used these to show a judge that our client had been taking his health seriously and that he was committed to resolving the issues which had caused the offending.

We also prepared detailed mitigation for our client and assisted in preparing character references to show the positive impact he had had on the lives of those around him. We instructed an expert barrister to represent him at the sentencing hearing and argue in favour of suspending the sentence.

During the hearing our character references were read out and our client's mitigation was explained to the judge. The judge saw the merit in our case almost immediately and was willing to impose a suspended sentence, despite the seriousness of the offending.

Our client was overjoyed that he would be able to return home and move forward with his life.