R v Ibnat Khan

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The provisions of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 apply in this case. The victim of the offending was and is a child. No matter may appear in any publication during his lifetime which might identify him as being the victim in this case. That life-long anonymity lasts unless waived by this Court or the Crown Court. It has not been waived and there is no reason to suppose that it ever will be.

This is an application by His Majesty's Solicitor General for leave to refer a sentence to this court under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 on the grounds that it was unduly lenient and that it should be increased. The sentence was imposed by His Honour Judge Darling sitting at the Inner London Crown Court on 5 November 2025. That followed a sentencing hearing which had spread over two days with a significant adjournment between those two days during which some further information was assembled and placed before the judge.

The offender Ibnat Khan was born on 23 October 2002. She is now 23 years old. The offending took place over a four month period between February and May 2024 when she was 21 years old. The offending committed during that period found itself reflected in four charges to which she pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity. They were as follows:

That amounted to a total term of two years' imprisonment suspended for two years and no additional requirements were attached to that suspended sentence.

The judge did make other relevant orders which were important for managing any risk which the offender might pose of further sexual offences. There was an indefinite restraining order; a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order; the notification requirements followed automatically on sentencing for a period of 10 years; some other orders were also made which it is unnecessary to mention.

Before moving to deal with the facts of these offences, we should begin by pointing out that the fourth charge, possession of indecent photographs of a child, related to photographs which had been taken of the victim and the offender while they were together by mutual consent. This was not a case where the offender had acquired images of children in the usual sense.

The offender was a learning support assistant at a secondary school in London. The victim was 14 years old and just approaching his 15th birthday when communications between their mobile phones suggested that more contact between them was occurring than might be expected, even given the fact that the offender in her role as a learning support assistant was the victim's mentor and responsible for his care. He was in need of that support because of behavioural difficulties which had caused him to receive special educational support.

Following that initial communication between mobile phones, and following his 15th birthday, communication escalated. It resulted in the two of them visiting hotels in London in order that they could have penetrative sex with each other. These assignations were arranged by the offender using a false name to book hotel rooms. Photographs were taken during them which showed that on four occasions at least balloons were used in order that they could take gas, probably nitrous oxide. There was very regular messaging between the two of them. Examination of those messages by the police in due course showed that there was a relationship between them for those four months in which regular penetrative sexual activity took place. During that time the offender became concerned that she might be pregnant and discussed that with the victim through messaging applications. He expressed relief when it transpired that she was not.

She used to use her position as learning support assistant in order to communicate with the victim's parents and in order to secure his absence from school with leave, pretending that he had medical or dental appointments to keep. She was able also to secure her own absence from work at the same time so that they could meet each other at hotels. On one occasion she communicated with the victim's parents so that they would permit him to access Wi-Fi at all times of the day and night, ostensibly this was to help him to submit his homework when he had completed it. Actually it was so that the two of them could message each other at any time.

Importantly, there came a time when she was suspended from the school and her job there because of inappropriate behaviour with pupils including but not limited to the victim. Notwithstanding this intervention, the behaviour of the offender continued. It continued also after the school confiscated the victim's phone. They continued to make contact with each other using alternative means and continued to meet at hotels. The offending only came to an end at the point when she was arrested.

The evidence did not show that the offender had used any threats or other means of coercion.

We have been assisted in dealing with this case by helpful submissions on behalf of the Solicitor General by Miss Pope and by helpful submissions on behalf of the offender by Mr Santos-Sindes.

In summary, the Solicitor General submits that the judge arrived at the sentence he did by taking a four year starting point from the guideline in relation to the first charge of meeting a child following sexual grooming but, the Solicitor General submits, that four year starting point required a significant uplift having regard to the number of factors in the case which increased seriousness and in particular the duration and number of offences which occurred during the four month period.

Secondly, the Solicitor General submits that the judge applied too great a reduction for the factors which reduced seriousness. The most significant of these, in the judge's estimation and in the estimation of this court, was the age of the offender at the time of the offending.

Thirdly, the Solicitor General submits that the judge was only able to arrive at a sentence of two years' imprisonment which could be suspended by taking a sentence of three years' imprisonment before allowing full credit for the pleas of guilty. The Solicitor General submits that that notional three year term was too low having regard to all the circumstances of the case. We should record that the offender was undoubtedly entitled, as Miss Pope agrees, to full credit for her pleas of guilty which were entered in the Magistrates' Court. She was committed for sentence and thus came before the court for sentencing at the earliest possible moment, so far as she was able to affect the proceedings.

It is necessary to set out the facts in just a little more detail. The relationship between these two young people is graphically illustrated and catalogued by a lengthy time-line which was prepared by the police after they had carried out a very thorough and meticulous investigation which revealed what had happened in every detail.

The offender was employed, as we have said, at this school as a learning support assistant. That employment began on 1 September 2023, about six months or so before she began to offend. She had received some safeguarding training in December 2023. She was at the same time a part-time university student and has since completed a degree. That role placed her, as we have said, in a position of trust in relation to the victim. It is right to point out in that context that it is a relatively junior role. She was not a professionally qualified teacher and had received relatively little professional training.

The victim, as we have said, turned 15 in February 2024. The offending started almost immediately after that birthday. Prior to that time he had been doing well at school but after that time his parents and the teaching staff at the school observed a significant change in his behaviour. His dedication to his academic studies fell away and he began to become more disruptive.

The first occasion when they met in a hotel was 9 February 2024. Sexual activity plainly took place. Photographs were taken and have subsequently been recovered. A second meeting took place at the same hotel on 16 February. Both bookings were made in the same false name. The same thing happened again on 27 February 2024.

Between all these encounters there were many messages full of sexual content in which both parties to this relationship were expressing enthusiasm for it and for the sexual behaviour in which they were jointly engaging. Hotel meetings continued in the same way during March. It was during March that occasions occurred when the offender had manipulated absences for them from school and also photographs began to be taken which showed the ingestion of drugs as we have mentioned. Again it was in March that the intervention by the offender took place in relation to the victim's access to Wi-Fi at home. Matters went on in this way throughout March and again through April when regular meetings took place in hotels around London.

It was in April that the victim's mother began to notice that he was no longer doing his homework as he had been used to do, that he had been receiving detentions and seemed to be arriving late at school having been up all night using his phone. On one occasion the victim's mother spoke to the offender about what was happening and about the impact of the relationship on her son. She did not know at that stage who she was talking to. She only knew that it was a person in whom her son, she thought, had an unhealthy interest which she wished to bring to an end.

Not long after that the victim's elder brother told their mother that he had seen a picture of a woman on his brother's phone who looked older than he was. Soon after that, the victim told his mother who it was that he was having this relationship with and told her that they were in love with each other. She reported the offender at that time to the school.

Meetings continued at hotels during May. The victim's phone was seized by the school on 7 May 2024 and the police were called. Contact continued in May, including sexual contact and sexual messaging. This resulted in the arrest of the offender on 12 May 2024. She was interviewed and denied the allegations in relation to the victim. At one point then during the interview she was shown a photograph of the two of them taken at a hotel during one of their encounters. From that point on she answered no comment to all remaining questions.

On 6 June the victim told a teacher that he was worried about his relationship with the offender. He said that he was she thinking of claiming that he had raped her so that she would not get into trouble and he would get the blame. He said he felt responsible and needed to "be a man". He was at this point still only 15 years old.

The offender was 23 years old by the time of the sentencing hearing and had no previous convictions. There was a pre-sentence report about her to which we shall turn shortly.

The judge was required to follow offence-specific guidelines which exist for all four of the charges for which he was required to sentence the offender. In addition, the guideline dealing with totality was relevant, as was the guideline for reduction in sentence for a guilty plea and, if the result was a sentence of two years or less, the guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences which deals with the circumstances in which a custodial sentence should or should not be suspended.

The judge decided to impose a lead sentence for the first charge of meeting a child following grooming. He followed the guideline in relation to that offence. He also followed the guidelines for the other three offences reflected in the second, third and fourth charge. The terms that he selected from those guidelines were selected in accordance with them. It is unnecessary to say anything about guideline treatment for those other offences because in the result they operated as aggravating features in relation to the first charge and the sentence on that charge was therefore required to reflect all the criminality involved in the sequence of events which we have summarised.

Therefore, the guideline for meeting a child following sexual grooming was the principal focus of the judge's intention. He decided that this offence was a category A1 offence because it involved raised harm and raised culpability. The factors which indicate raised harm are continued contact despite victim's attempts to terminate contact, sexual images exchanged and child particularly vulnerable due to personal circumstances. The judge found that elements of those three factors were present in this case. It is right to observe that their presence is somewhat nuanced in that it was not the victim who sought to terminate contact with the offender, it was the school and his parents. Sexual images were exchanged and we have described the circumstances in which that took place. Generally in offences of this kind grooming by the use of sexual images which are sent to children takes place in a somewhat different form from that which was present here. The particular vulnerability of the child due to his personal circumstances was a raised harm factor squarely present here.

So far as culpability is concerned, this was a case where penetrative sexual activity occurred between the offender and the child victim on multiple occasions. There was an abuse of trust in the circumstances we have already described. The child was particularly vulnerable in the circumstances in which he found himself. A category A1 offence for the purposes of this guideline commands a starting point of four years' custody and a range of three to seven years.

The judge had before him a considerable amount of material. It is apparent both from his sentencing remarks and from what else we know about the hearing which he conducted that he considered all of it with great care. He paid particular attention to the circumstances of this unusual case before deciding upon the sentence we have already set out.

There was an impact statement by the victim's father. That describes the effect of the offending on his son and we have summarised that effect already in dealing with the conduct of the victim at school starting from his 15th birthday. We have referred to the pre-sentence report. There were careful sentencing notes. Importantly, there was a letter from the offender to the sentencing judge which expressed remorse. The judge took particular care at the hearing to inquire of the offender about that and to satisfy himself, as he did, that that remorse was genuine. There was a letter from a charitable foundation to which the offender had turned for help in dealing with her interest in sex with boys. There was a letter from her parents and her uncle and there was evidence that until the sentencing hearing following upon the offending which caused it she had been planning a career in the law.

The pre-sentence report did not assess the offender as being naive. It recorded that the offender had not believed at the time of the offending that she was causing any harm. The author of the pre-sentence report took the view that the offender presented a high risk of sexual harm and emotional and psychological harm to children and took the view that the offending was so serious that only custody could be recommended.

The judge's sentencing remarks are carefully calibrated. He identified precisely the serious nature of the criminality with which he was dealing and identified also the points which might be made in the offender’s favour. The judge was well aware of the abuse of trust with which he had to deal. We have already indicated that he took a starting point of four years' imprisonment. He identified aggravating factors, in particular the continuation of the offending after the intervention of the school to try and bring it to an end and also after the intervention of the police. He found that the offender's communications with the victim's parents elevated the breach of trust. The Solicitor General submits that the judge ought to have found in addition that the duration of offending and the number of offences was a serious aggravating factor. This, says the Solicitor General, should have operated to increase the starting point from four years to five or six years before any reduction for mitigation and guilty pleas could be made.

The judge identified mitigating factors, in addition to the good character of the offender which in the context of offending of this kind is of relatively limited weight. More weighty matters were found in the remorse which had been expressed by the offender, her youth and immaturity, the voluntary assistance she had sought to try to address the impulses which had caused her to offend and her employment and education prospects.

The judge balanced the aggravating and mitigating factors and reduced the starting point from four to three years before giving full credit. That took him to a sentence of two years' imprisonment. He suspended it having applied the imposition guideline, saying that the prospects of rehabilitation were realistic and that the only factor militating against suspending the sentence of two years was the seriousness of the conduct for which it was imposed. So far as public protection is concerned, the judge said:

The judge had imposed various orders, which we have mentioned at the start of this judgment, which were designed to address the risk posed to children. For all of those reasons the judge decided to suspend the term.

We have summarised as we have been going through our summary of the facts of the case and the judge's approach what the Solicitor General submits was wrong with it. In short, the Solicitor General submits that the judge erred in arriving at a sentence so short that it could lawfully be suspended.

Mr Santos-Sindes on behalf of the offender submits that the mitigation which is available to her was such that the sentence imposed by the judge, although lenient and perhaps merciful, was properly open to him. At the forefront of the mitigation, as we have said, is the question of her age and maturity together with her remorse.

The judge was particularly concerned to make an appropriate adjustment to the sentence which would normally follow in a case of this kind to reflect the age and lack of maturity of the offender. He referred in the course of his sentencing remarks to the state of knowledge scientific as to the development of the young brain. The sentencing of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 is affected by the increasing awareness among sentencing judges of that scientific knowledge. The impact of youth and lack of maturity is particularly found in cases of impulsive behaviour which is irresponsible and reckless in its willingness to take risk. Those are features in our judgment which can be found in the offender's conduct in this case.

The approach recommended and urged upon us by the Solicitor General is one which would be taken in almost all cases of this kind where a member of staff at a school uses that position in order to take advantage sexually of a child in their care. Immediate imprisonment will almost always follow. What we have had to decide is whether in steering his course through the case as he did, the judge imposed a sentence which was lenient or one which was unduly lenient. There is no doubt that the judge's sentence was merciful and that a longer and therefore immediate sentence of imprisonment could properly have been imposed.

In the particular circumstances of this case, we have, after careful thought, come to the conclusion that the judge's conclusion was one which was within the range available to him. The starting point of four years' imprisonment in the guideline did warrant an upward adjustment because of the duration of the offending and the number of offences. However, it certainly also warranted a substantial reduction when the judge arrived at the point in the process where he was assessing the mitigating factors. We have emphasised, as the judge did, the age and lack of maturity of this offender. We would also particularly mention at this point her remorse as accepted by the judge as genuine. That is a factor which is reassuring about her future and the risk she may pose to future child victims. Further reassurance in that respect, as the judge discerned, was to be found in her willing and voluntary seeking of professional support and assistance in the period between detection and sentencing. Further, we would make the point that detection occurred in June 2024 and sentencing occurred in November 2025. No part of that time period was attributable to any hesitancy in entering a plea by the offender. In the circumstances of the criminal justice system as they are now found in 2026, that is not an uncommon period of time to find between arrest and sentencing, even in a case where the offender enters a plea in the Magistrates' Court and is then committed for sentence to the Crown Court. It is not in itself a passage of time which can result in any adjustment of sentence at all. In this case, in our judgment, it needs to be seen alongside the age and immaturity of the offender and the stage in her life when these events occurred. These proceedings and this conviction have had a very significant impact on a young person at the start of her adult life, causing her worry and fear of what the future held for her. Careers she may have chosen are now closed to her. This is a factor which is not in our judgment irrelevant, although the weight to be given to it is limited.

Once the sentence was at a length which meant that a suspended sentence could lawfully be imposed, the judge was required to follow and apply the Imposition Guideline. We cannot fault his reasoning in that respect.

In our judgment the judge, who is an experienced sentencing judge, devoted particular care to this case and was particularly concerned to arrive at a sentence which was suited to this highly unusual case. Given the approach that he took, and the way in which he expressed himself, we have decided, as we have said, that the course he took, although highly unusual, should be described as one of mercy rather than undue leniency. The offender was just young enough to enable this course to be taken.

In those circumstances although we give the Solicitor General leave to bring this Reference, we decline to interfere with the sentence that was imposed.