Suspended sentence for sexual communications

Case study summary

Our client was facing a risk of prison after attempting to communicate with a decoy officer who was pretending to be a child. He instructed our firm to ensure he stood the best chance of avoiding this fate.

Case study

Our client was arrested and charged after communicated with an undercover officer on a social media application. The officer had told him she was a 13-year-old girl and he had proceeded to send inappropriate messages of a sexual nature and attempted to incite her to sending pictures of herself. There was a real risk that our client could go to prison for these offences and he instructed us to give him the best chance of avoiding this.

He explained that he accepted the offences, but that he was drinking heavily at the time and suffering from depression. Of course, this was not an excuse, but it certainly provided a reason as to why someone who had never been in trouble before would display this kind of behaviour.

It was crucial that this was expressed to the court along with his usually good character. In order to do this, we instructed an expert to comment on his alcoholism, and retrieved character references from those close to our client. They were able to show that this had been a lapse in his standard behaviour and that they would support him in his recovery and rehabilitation going forward.

We instructed an experienced barrister to present this mitigation to the Crown Court and ultimately, the presiding judge suspended his prison sentence. Our client was able to conduct his rehabilitation within the community and begin rebuilding his life.