R v James Shiels

This is an appeal against sentence brought by leave of the single judge.

The appellant, James Shiels, is 33 years old. For most of his life he was living with his mother, Lindsay Shiels, who brought him up after his parents split when he was an infant and his father went to live in Australia. He developed a habit of alcohol and substance misuse and became dependent on cannabis and cocaine. In around 2020 he began to pester his maternal grandmother, Sheila Clarke, for money to fund his habit. He began by asking for small amounts, but by April 2023 this had escalated to demands for £150 a time. He would call her at least five times a week asking her for money. Sometimes he would ring her directly. On other occasions he would get his mother to call her on his behalf. His mother would always be distressed when making such calls and his grandmother would give in to the pressure to transfer money to the appellant in order to spare her.

If Mrs Clarke refused to give in to the appellant's demands for money, he became emotionally abusive, not only swearing and shouting at her, but saying that he wished that she was dead or that unless she gave him money he would starve or that other people would burn his house down. She felt immensely guilty and compelled to transfer money to him.

On 12 November 2024 the appellant pleaded guilty at the plea and trial preparation hearing to a charge of coercive and controlling behaviour in relation to Mrs Clarke in the period from 5 April 2023 to 6 August 2024. It was estimated that during that period she had sent him around £20,000 in total. In one month alone she sent him £3,000. She often came off the phone to the appellant in tears and she would be worried about when the next call would come. His behaviour had caused her difficulty in sleeping and the stress of dealing with his calls caused her to skip meals because she did not want to eat. She had to monitor her spending and had to cut down on buying items for herself because of giving money to the appellant. In the victim impact statement provided by the appellant's mother, she said that due to the large amounts of money he took, Mrs Clarke, who was then aged 84, could no longer afford to live in her own home and her health had been adversely affected. At the time when that statement was made Mrs Clarke had had a spell in hospital.

By the time he entered his guilty plea to the charge relating to his grandmother, the appellant had been charged on a separate indictment with three offences against his mother: a count of coercive and controlling behaviour between 1 June 2023 and 4 August 2024, and counts of theft and common assault. He pleaded guilty to those counts on 6 August 2024 on his first appearance before Crawley Magistrates' Court, and was committed to the Crown Court for sentence.

The counts of theft and common assault related to events which occurred on 3 August 2024. It was the appellant's behaviour on that day which caused the appellant's sister to phone the police and report that her mother had been physically abused and held hostage in her own home by the appellant, and had been under threats of violence until she had telephoned everyone that she knew asking for money to fund his drug habit. It was that call which led to the appellant's arrest on 4 August 2024. He was interviewed in respect of the offending against his mother and gave a combination of “no comment” answers to questions and some denials of the behaviour alleged.

During the period of this indictment the appellant showed daily aggression towards his mother, shouting at her and refusing to leave the home until he had obtained money from her. On the rare occasions that she was able to leave the house, he would call her continuously on the phone to find out where she was until she came back. If she came back later than expected, he was aggressive towards her. On one occasion he threatened to kill himself unless she gave him money. She dreaded every day and felt that the only way to protect herself was to give him money.

On 3 August 2024 the appellant was particularly agitated. He had been out drinking the night before. He caused his mother to phone her mother and sister asking for money, whilst he listened in to the calls, continuing to shout and swear at her. He was particularly abusive towards her after she accidentally let one of his dogs out of the front door whilst she had gone to empty the bins. A neighbour overheard him shouting, "I'll fucking kill you", and described his mother as "cowering". Later that day. when she was sitting on the sofa and he was demanding money from her, he punched the coffee table in front of her and got in her face, and she felt terrified. This incident was the subject of the charge of common assault.

At around 6.00 pm he went to his mother’s handbag, took out her bank card and went to a cash machine, using the card to withdraw all the money from her account (£150) leaving her only 80p on which to live for the rest of the month. Understandably she suffered from anxiety and depression, and hardly ever went shopping for food anymore because she did not have enough money to buy it.

On 15 November 2024 the appellant was sentenced in the Crown Court at Lewes by Ms Recorder Sims to a total period of 54 months' imprisonment, comprising 22 months' imprisonment for the offences against Mrs Clark (after a 25 per cent credit for his guilty plea) and 32 months' imprisonment for the offence of coercive or controlling behaviour against his mother (after giving full credit for the plea of guilty). The Recorder treated the common assault and theft as aggravating features of that offence and imposed no separate penalty in respect of them. The Recorder decided to make these sentences consecutive on the basis that she considered that they related to separate victims and separate courses of events.

The appellant appeals to this court on the basis that the sentence was manifestly excessive.

Miss Palfreman contends that the judge erred in imposing consecutive sentences, or at very least that she paid insufficient regard to the principle of totality. Miss Palfreman submitted that the offending was properly viewed as a single course of conduct, albeit that there were two separate victims. She drew attention to the similarities in the conduct complained of, and the very significant overlap in the periods of the two indictments. If, contrary to that submission, it had been right in principle to impose consecutive sentences, she contended that the overall tariff failed to make a sufficient reduction for totality.

In her written submissions, Miss Palfreman drew our attention to the fact that the appellant was lightly convicted. He had one conviction for two offences for which he had been sentenced to a community order on 1 April 2021 for breaches of a non-molestation order. The victim on that occasion was his former partner who is the mother of his child. She had obtained a restraining order against him. The appellant had never had any contact with the child, who was born after the couple parted. He also had historic cautions dating from 2005 for assault and battery and for threats to kill in 2011, but the circumstances of those matters were unknown. He had performed the unpaid work that was a requirement of his community order and continued to work in a charity shop on a voluntary basis after it expired. However. this had all occurred during a period of abstinence prior to the spate of offending behaviour for which the appellant fell to be sentenced.

The pre-sentence report indicated remorse and a complete acceptance of responsibility for his offending behaviour. The appellant said he had been under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, and because he was unemployed he relied on his mother to fund his dependency. Since going into custody he had abstained from alcohol and drugs. He had applied to attend courses in custody which would help him towards gaining employment on his release.

The pre-sentence report also indicates that the appellant had suffered physical abuse at boarding school but that his reports of that abuse had not been acted upon and that this had had a bad impact on his mental wellbeing.

There was no dispute that the offences of coercive and controlling behaviour fell within Category A1 under the definitive sentencing guidelines for this offence. As the offences were committed in a domestic context, the overarching principles on domestic abuse were also relevant. Those principles remind sentencers that domestic abuse offence are regarded as particularly serious within the criminal justice system and that such abuse can inflict lasting trauma on victims and their extended families.

In terms of culpability it was Category A in both cases because the offending was persistent and took place over a prolonged period. In terms of harm it was Category 1 because of the very serious alarm and distress which had a substantially adverse effect on both victims. The starting point was one of two years and six months' custody with a range of one to four years.

Whilst it would have been open to the sentencing judge to have passed concurrent sentences, we do not consider that she erred in principle in taking the decision to pass consecutive sentences. Whilst there was a similar motivation fuelling the appellant's behaviour towards his mother and grandmother, his mother was living with him and had to endure this vile abuse on a daily basis. She was not free to live her life as she wished. She was terrified of her son, her movements were monitored, and under constant threat of violence she was deprived of the money she needed in order to live and even to eat.

Although his mother was used by him as one of the means of exerting emotional blackmail upon his elderly and vulnerable grandmother, in truth the appellant’s conduct towards his grandmother, though just as reprehensible, was different in character. He was bleeding her of her money through emotional blackmail by using his behaviour towards his mother as a means of coercion. When that did not work, he played on her sympathy. There were two separate victims upon each of whom the offending behaviour had a very distressing impact. Equally, there was nothing wrong with the decision taken by the judge to mark the overall criminality of the appellant's conduct by treating the theft and the assault as aggravating features of the offending against his mother.

However, serious though the offending was, we do consider that there is force in the argument that on weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors the judge should not have taken a notional sentence after trial for the offences against Mrs Shiels which was right at the top of the available range. The appellant was lightly convicted, he had shown genuine remorse and he had taken some steps towards addressing the root cause of his offending behaviour. There was no evidence of any physical violence towards his mother, although the psychological impact of his behaviour towards her cannot be underestimated. Regrettably, there are cases that are even worse than this one.

Moreover, and more importantly, as Miss Palfreman stressed today in her attractive oral submissions, there was a need to reflect totality when standing back and looking at the overall tariff. Having done so, we are persuaded that the notional sentence after trial for the offences against Mrs Shiels should have been one of three years' imprisonment, which, after affording full credit for the guilty plea, would result in a sentence of two years. In the case of the offences against Mrs Clarke, which did not have the additional aggravating features of the theft and assault, we would reduce the starting point from 26 months to 24 months to reflect totality, and then apply 25 per cent credit for the guilty plea, resulting in a sentence of 18 months. The overall tariff would therefore be one of three years and six months.

For those reasons we allow the appeal. We quash the sentence imposed and substitute for it a sentence of two years' imprisonment for the offence of coercive and controlling behaviour against Mrs Shiels, and a consecutive sentence of 18 months' imprisonment for the offence of coercive and controlling behaviour against Mrs Clarke. There is no separate penalty in respect of the offences of theft and common assault.