R v Joshua Fletcher

The provisions of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 apply to the offences in this case, sexual assaults and rape. There were two complainants, as we shall explain, both female. No matter relating to either complainant may during her lifetime be included in any publication if it is likely to lead members of the public to identify her as the victim of a sexual offence. This prohibition applies unless waived or lifted, in accordance with section 3 of the 1992 Act.

The appellant Joshua Fletcher is now 19 years old. On 26 February 2025, when he was 18, he was convicted in the Crown Court at Warwick of sexual assault (count 1) and rape (count 2), committed in early 2024 against the first complainant, when she and the appellant were both 17, and of rapes (counts 3, 4, 5 and 6) committed in August 2024 against the second complaint when she was 16 and the appellant was either 17 (count 3) or 18 (counts 4, 5 and 6, committed on his 18th birthday). The rapes of the second complainant occurred while the appellant was on bail in respect of the sexual assault and rape of the first complainant.

On 15 April 2025, in the same court, the appellant, still then 18, was sentenced to an extended sentence of 18 years, comprising a custodial term of 13 years and an extended licence period of 5 years. That was imposed on each of counts 4, 5 and 6, concurrent. They were taken as lead offences, the sentence for which was intended to reflect the entirety of the offending behaviour across all counts. There were concurrent sentences of 12 months’ detention on count 1, 5 years on count 2, and 7 years on count 3.

The appellant now appeals against sentence with the leave of the Single Judge, who granted a representation order under which Lucinda Wilmott-Lascelles of counsel represents him, as she did in the court below. We are grateful for her written and oral submissions in support of the appeal.

The offence under count 1 occurred at a time when the appellant and the first complainant were seeing each other. She was on a FaceTime call to a friend. The appellant forced his hands down her trousers, ignoring physical and verbal resistance, until he got inside her underwear and touched her vagina. A few weeks later he asked to have sex with her and she refused. The appellant did not take that answer, pestering her and eventually forcing himself on top of her, holding her down and vaginally raping her without using a condom as she cried (count 2). The appellant denied both offences when arrested and interviewed.

Whilst on bail for that offending, the appellant started seeing the second complainant. The first rape (count 3) occurred when she felt unwell and made it clear that she did not want to continue, having initially consented to sexual activity. The appellant ignored that withdrawal of consent and overpowered the complainant when she tried to push him off her. She protested verbally but he carried on until ejaculation. He played with her emotions afterwards, causing her to question what had really happened, and so the relationship continued.

On the morning of the appellant’s 18th birthday, he and the second complainant having spent the previous day and night together, which included consensual sex and the smoking of cannabis, the second complainant was asleep and the appellant then acted upon a fantasy of his of having sex with someone who was asleep and ejaculating into their mouth. Whilst the second complainant slept, the appellant penetrated her vaginally (count 4), anally (count 5), and orally (count 6). When she woke and questioned what had happened, since she found herself naked and with a strange taste and some bleeding in her mouth, the appellant told her that he had been unable to resist her and had “taken her in all the holes”. When arrested and interviewed, the appellant again denied the offences.

There were victim personal statements from both complainants, which we have read. We do not rehearse them in detail. It suffices to say that they justified the submission, made in the prosecution sentencing note in the court below, that the complainants had both been severely damaged by the appellant’s offences against them.

There was a Pre-sentence Report which confirmed the appellant’s disdainful lack of regard for his victims, absence of insight or empathy, and consequently, the absence of any remorse. It justifiably concluded that he presented a very high risk of committing further specified offences against teenage girls. Miss Wilmott-Lascelles realistically does not contend on appeal, nor was it any ground of appeal, that there is or was any basis for upsetting the judge’s conclusions that the appellant was a dangerous offender and that a standard determinate sentence would not fully address the risk that he presented, so that it was appropriate to pass an extended sentence of detention. Nor is there any complaint about the length of the extended licence period.

There are then two grounds of appeal:

The appellant was previously of good character and suffered from anxiety and depression, but the judge was entitled to conclude, as he did, that mental health difficulties did not justify a significant reduction in sentence. There was, so far as we can see, no basis for any suggestion that the appellant’s mental health lessened his culpability. Indeed, there was evidence of manipulative behaviour by him, using threats of self-harm if he did not have his way as a means by which to secure sexual compliance. The judge also found that he persuaded another girl or young woman to come to court and lie for him, a person with whom he had some sort of relationship in which he was, as with both complainants, controlling and manipulative.

In granting leave to appeal, stating simply that both grounds of appeal were arguable, the Single Judge ordered a Pre-appeal Report to assist the court in what he described as a “troubling case”. The probation service stated in response that there was nothing it could usefully add to the Pre-sentence Report, but suggested a prison report to address progress and behaviour in custody. As a result, we have received and considered a report from a probation officer and prison offender manager at HMP/YOI Swinfen Hall, to which the appellant was transferred on 28 April 2025 from HMP Brinsford. The upshot of that prison report is that after a difficult start, the appellant has settled at Swinfen Hall. He is engaging with the prison regime fully. He interacts positively with staff and other prisoners and he works in one of the prison workshops four afternoons a week and in another internal work placement on a Friday afternoon. His current engagement also extends to group activities focused upon rehabilitation, including reading resources and structured conversations with prison staff and other inmates.

That positive progress has all been made since 15 October 2025, when the appellant was admitted to the Psychologically Informed Planned Environment wing (PIPE) at Swinfen Hall. For his first 5½ months at Swinfen Hall, the appellant did not engage at all, and from 13 June 2025 until his move to PIPE he chose to isolate in his cell, claiming to be in fear for his safety because of the nature of his offending. The appellant is on a waiting list for an offending behaviour programme known as Building Choices, but with an earliest date for possible release in 2033, he will not be admitted to that programme, we are told, before 2031.

The judge conducted the appellant’s trial and was, therefore, in a unique position that cannot be replicated in this court to assess the appellant and make findings about him. The judge set out his findings with care and in some detail, but in summary, the judge held that the first complainant had mental health difficulties and physical frailties that the appellant exploited; the appellant was controlling, manipulative and paranoid; the appellant had become obsessed, over a two-year period or so, with his sexual fantasies, an obsession fuelled by watching pornography, especially pornography upon sleeping or unconscious women. He had thus developed a warped attitude to sexual relations that was “completely alien to all right thinking people”. The judge found that the appellant gave the second complainant cannabis in order to have sex with a sleeping victim to fulfil that particular, long-term rape fantasy of his on his 18th birthday; the appellant displayed towards the complainants at the time and during the criminal proceedings no remorse whatever for what he had done.

The judge said at the outset that he would bear in mind throughout that the appellant was 17 when he committed the offences under counts 1, 2 and 3, and that the offences under counts 4, 5 and 6 were committed as part of a single attack on the morning of his 18th birthday. There were three separate counts because in that attack he raped the second complainant in three separate ways, not because there were three distinct episodes of abuse. The judge was sentencing an adult, albeit a very young adult, and he was satisfied that it was not unjust to sentence by reference to the Sentencing Council’s offence specific guideline on the sentencing of adults for sexual offences.

The judge put counts 4, 5 and 6 into category 2 for harm, since the second complainant was particularly vulnerable in her cannabis induced deep slumber. We consider that to be correct, and plainly so, whether or not getting her to smoke cannabis was a deliberate ploy to induce such a sleep. The appellant’s intentions in relation to the cannabis use were relevant to culpability rather than harm.

The judge put those counts into category A for culpability because of his conclusion that the appellant had, indeed, used drugs to facilitate the offending. That was a finding that the appellant persuaded the second complainant to smoke cannabis with him intending that it should induce passivity to enable him to act out his sexual fantasy on her. Confirming that to be the nature of the finding, the judge later described the rapes under 4,5 and 6 as planned, and spelled out to the appellant that, “You deliberately usedcannabis to impair [the second complainant] so you could achieve what you wanted.” The judge said that the seriousness of the offending under counts 4, 5 and 6 was aggravated by the fact that they involved three different rapes on that final occasion and by the fact that he had previously raped the second complainant. We note that the latter factor also would have justified on its own the conclusion that the later rapes were, each of them, category A for culpability, the use of previous violence against the victim being itself a culpability A factor under the guideline.

The category starting points and ranges in the guideline are, of course, for a single offence. Here, taking into account the matters we have just noted and, in addition, the offending against the first complainant and the fact that the appellant was on bail for that offending when he abused the second complainant, the judge concluded that a proper sentence for counts 4, 5 and 6, bearing in mind that there were to be concurrent sentences on counts 1, 2 and 3, was a sentence within the higher category 1A range for a single offence. That range is 13 to 19 years with a starting point of 15 years. The judge then reminded himself of the appellant’s age when offending and of the guidance in R v ZA [2023] EWCA Crim 596 and in the Sentencing Council Guideline on sentencing children and young people. He stated a conclusion, carefully reasoned on the facts of this case that, “The aspects of immaturity that you have shown do not significantly reduce your culpability, your responsibility for what you have done.” He indicated, however, that they were something he would take into account when considering the impact of custody upon the appellant. We agree with the submission made by Miss Wilmott-Lascelles this morning that the prison report we have now received provides, indeed, some evidence of the particular impact, it may be, of the defendant’s pre-existing vulnerabilities on his experience of custody, at all events during the first six months or so since sentence.

In the absence of any mitigation other than relative youth or immaturity or personal vulnerabilities, the judge pronounced and explained the sentence we identified at the outset: a custodial term of 13 years and an extended licence period of 5 years. The judge did not state what custodial term he would have imposed in the absence of those mitigating factors. However, the tenor of the sentencing remarks indicates, we think, that the judge had in mind a term well above the category 1A starting point of 15 years prior to allowing for that mitigation, and in our view, such a term would indeed have been appropriate for an older offender under the sentencing structure used by the judge.

Another judge might have used consecutive sentences to mark more directly the separate and successive offending against two complainants. A sentence at the top of the category 2B range for count 2, with a concurrent sentence on count 1, and a consecutive sentence at or near the top of the category 2A range for counts 4, 5 and 6, taken together, with a concurrent sentence also for count 3, would have been easily justified, giving a provisional total custodial term for an older offender of 21 or 22 years prior to a downward adjustment for totality that would then have been called for. After that adjustment a custodial term of at least 18 years would have been appropriate prior to any allowance for the appellant’s age, immaturity or vulnerability.

Furthermore, and reverting to the judge’s preferred sentencing structure, a conclusion that a custodial term of at least 18 years would have been appropriate for an older offender does not, we think, depend on the judge’s conclusion that the incident that generated counts 4, 5 and 6 involved the use of cannabis to facilitate those rapes. For an older offender, raping the second complainant in three separate ways while she slept, even if each rape on its own was considered to fall within guideline category 2B (range 7 to 9 years) would have merited a custodial term of 12 years, the starting point for category 1B, prior to a substantial increase that would be required to take account of count 3, the first rape against the same complainant. A further uplift of at least six years would have been required to take account then also of counts 1 and 2, the earlier sexual assault and rape against the first complainant. That would also result in an aggregate custodial term in the region of 22 years, subject then to a final assessment of overall totality, stepping back from the detail.

In support of the first ground of appeal, Miss Wilmott-Lascelles submits that the use of drugs to facilitate the rapes under counts 4, 5 and 6 was a factor that was not available to the judge, and that there was no other category A factor. We do not accept either part of that submission. The rape under count 3, as we have said, was previous sexual violence against the second complainant, a category A factor in its own right. As to planning and the use of drugs, Miss Wilmott-Lascelles argues, firstly, that the cannabis use was put before the jury simply as part of the activity prior to the rapes and that the prosecution neither opened the case to the jury nor cross-examined the appellant on the specific basis that it had been a deliberate ploy to facilitate the appellant’s fantasy of an unconscious victim. However, whether or not the use of cannabis was deliberate in that way did not affect the liability issue before the jury for each of counts, 4, 5 and 6. The liability issue was whether the appellant did what was alleged while the second complainant was asleep. His defence was a denial of any sexual activity or act whilst she slept.

Miss Wilmott-Lascelles argues, secondly, that if, as we have therefore concluded, it was open in principle to the judge to consider for himself whether that category A culpability factor was present on the facts, as part of the sentencing exercise, on the evidence taken as a whole, including in particular the complainant’s own evidence before the jury and other matters that had been disclosed by her, there was no proper basis for a finding that her use of cannabis had in fact had any material impact on her on that morning. In our judgment, though the submissions were developed attractively and we see some degree of force in that end conclusion, that there may be doubt as to how effective any deliberate ploy ultimately was, in our view they do not undermine the existence of sufficient basis on the evidence in this case as a whole for the judge’s conclusion that the appellant’s intention when getting the second complainant to join him in cannabis use on that night was as he found.

In support of the second ground of appeal, Miss Wilmott-Lascelles submits that the judge failed ultimately to consider the appellant’s age and vulnerabilities at the time of the offences sufficiently, so as therefore to fail to apply any available discount to allow for that factor. She submits that a custodial term of around two thirds that which might have been imposed on a mature adult offender should have been imposed. We have already noted that the judge said at the outset that he had the appellant’s young age well in mind and that he referred to the guideline on sentencing children and young people and R v ZA, as cited to him and again to us.

Paragraph 6.46 of the guideline states that if sentencing an offender under 18:

“The court may feel it appropriate to apply a sentence broadly in the region of half to two thirds of the adult sentence for those aged 15-17 [...] This is only a rough guide and must not be applied mechanistically. In most cases when considering the appropriate reduction from the adult sentence, the emotional and developmental age and maturity of the child or young person is of at least equal importance as their chronological age. [...]” (original emphasis).

A non-mechanistic approach by reference to emotional and developmental maturity, and not just to chronological age, may in some cases lead to the conclusion that a sentence of half to two thirds of that indicated by the adult sentencing guideline would be inappropriately severe for the individual case. In other cases, it may lead to the conclusion that such a sentence would be unduly lenient and that only a more modest, if any, reduction is justified.

In the present case, in our view, the judge plainly did not, as was submitted, fail to apply any available discount. The custodial term of 13 years he imposed is at the top of the category 2A range for a single offence, and as we have noted already, for the totality of the appellant’s offending we think the judge had in mind a sentence well above the 15-year starting point for category 1A, had it not been for the appellant’s age and vulnerability.

We have also explained already how, as we see it, a custodial term of at least 18 years would have been merited if the appellant had been older and without those vulnerabilities. The judge, in fact, conducted a careful assessment by reference to the available evidence of the appellant’s maturity and behaviour, having had the advantage, we note again, of presiding over a trial at which the appellant gave evidence. His conclusion was that in this individual case the appellant’s young age and personal characteristics did not significantly reduce culpability, and we do not consider there is any ground upon which to reject that conclusion.

In our view, the resulting final sentence is neither wrong in principle nor manifestly excessive. The judge’s decision on the appropriate custodial term for this particular appellant in the circumstances of this case was properly holistic and not mechanistic. However, for completeness we note that on the view we take and have explained, the 13-year custodial term imposed is at least 28% shorter than the custodial term that would have been merited for an older offender. If the issue were seen as one of making sufficient allowance for age and other vulnerabilities then that is not, in our view, too little an allowance, let alone manifestly so, in this individual case.

For those reasons, although we thank Miss Wilmott-Lascelles again for her elegant and determined submissions, we have not been persuaded that the sentence imposed in this case was more severe than be it needed to be, and this appeal is dismissed.