R v Jamie George

The provisions of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 apply to these offences. Under those provisions where sexual offences have been committed against a person, no matter relating to that person shall during that person’s lifetime be included in any publication, if it is likely to lead members of the public to identify that person as the victim of those offences or any of them. That prohibition applies unless waived or lifted in accordance with section 3 of the Act. No order waiving or lifting the prohibition has been made.

The appellant, Jamie George (now aged 19), appeals with the leave of the Single Judge against a sentence of 45 months’ detention in a young offender institution. That sentence was imposed in the Crown Court at Leicester on 19 November 2025, after the appellant was convicted by the Leicester and Rutland Youth Court and committed to the Crown Court for sentence pursuant to sections 16 and 20 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

The appellant was 16 when he committed the offences in question, as was his victim (to whom we shall refer as the complainant to preserve her anonymity). The appellant was 18 by the time of his trial. The Youth Court proceeded to deal with the matter nonetheless pursuant to section 29 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963. The committal under section 16 of the Sentencing Act was to sentence the appellant for offences of rape and digital penetration. The committal under section 20 was to sentence him for an offence of intentional strangulation committed shortly before those offences. The sentence of 45 months was imposed for the rape but the 45-month term was intended to reflect the overall seriousness of all three offences taken together. There were concurrent sentences of 24 months and 12 months for the digital penetration and intentional strangulation respectively.

The committal for sentence was on the basis of the Youth Court’s assessment that even had the appellant not turned 18 during the course of the proceedings, the Crown Court ought to have had power to deal with him for the rape and/or digital penetration, by a sentence of detention under section 250 of the Sentencing Act, i.e. a sentence not constrained by the maximum available sentence in the Youth Court, which would have been a 2-year detention and training order.

Mr Johashen, who appears for the appellant today and who appeared for him in the Crown Court, rightly reminded us that the correct approach in a case such as this was explained in R v Ghafoor [2002] EWCA Crim 1857. The starting point should be the sentence the offender would have been likely to receive if he had been sentenced at the date when the offences were committed. That is a powerful factor and justice requires good reason before it can be appropriate to consider a sentence that is more severe in effect than the sentence that would have been passed then. Here, had the appellant been still 16 when the question of sentence arose, the seriousness of these offences would have resulted in the same committals for sentence to the Crown Court. The maximum sentence available to the Youth Court is not a relevant benchmark for considering the appropriateness of the custodial sentence in fact imposed. As we shall explain, the judge in fact identified 45 months as the length of custodial sentence she would have imposed if the appellant had been 16. The approach required by Ghafoor was applied.

The appellant’s offences were committed on 2 January 2024. The appellant and the complainant had met at a party and there had been some follow-up contact over social media before they met up again in person.

On 2 January 2024, at the complainant’s home, there was some consensual sexual activity. That did not include vaginal penetration. The appellant left to go home but later contacted the complainant saying he had missed his train and asking if he could stay the night. The complainant’s mother gave permission. Once the appellant and the complainant were back in her bedroom the appellant wanted more sexual activity including full intercourse. The complainant refused him, making it clear she did not want to have sex. The appellant began to kiss the complainant aggressively and gripped her around the neck so that she was struggling to breathe (offence 3, intentional strangulation). She was frightened and hit out at him. The appellant persisted in unwanted behaviour to which the complainant said “no”. He proceeded to move or remove the complainant’s clothing and put his fingers into her vagina which she did not want (offence 2, digital penetration). After that stopped the appellant lay on top of the complainant and said he wanted to penetrate her with the tip of his penis. The complainant repeatedly said she did not want that. The appellant went ahead anyway and in fact fully penetrated her vagina with his penis. That lasted for around 30 seconds (offence 1, rape).

There were messages the following day, after the appellant left, in which he made admissions and, although there were also some denials, he essentially accepted that what he had done had been wrong. In police interview however, the appellant denied any wrongdoing. He accepted he had put his hands on the complainant’s neck but denied that would have caused her any distress. He accepted digitally penetrating her but said that had been consensual, and he denied any penile penetration.

The appellant was 18 when convicted and sentenced. He was of previous good character and there were some strong positive character references about him. He had completed his school studies well, obtained a place at university, and had positive relationships without any sign of further offending behaviour.

The complainant had not done so well. The judge had victim impact evidence from her showing that she had been traumatised by what the appellant did to her, leading to prolonged consequences including self-harm and struggles with college studies and mental health issues. There had been an adverse impact upon her in a subsequent relationship and the court process had been difficult.

There was a pre-sentence report which identified that the appellant demonstrated limited victim empathy and externalised blame, continued to deny the offences, and represented at least a medium level risk of reoffending.

The grounds of appeal contend that the judge took too high a starting point, failed to make sufficient adjustment in accordance with the Sentencing Children and Young People Guideline, and passed the final sentence of 45 months after initially announcing that sentence would be 40 months following representations from the Crown and contrary to a submission by the defence that the sentence should be that which was originally pronounced.

In our judgment, there is nothing in that final point. The judge did initially indicate a final sentence of 40 months, saying she was reducing sentence by “just over half”, from a term of 90 months that she had derived from the sentencing guideline for rape applicable to an adult. A brief dialogue followed, provoked by the judge herself not by counsel for the prosecution, about what the Sentencing Children and Young People Guideline actually said. It became apparent that the judge had mistakenly taken it to suggest indicatively a reduction of half to two-thirds for 15 to 17 year olds whereas in fact paragraph 6.46 of the guideline suggests indicatively, for that age bracket, a sentence in the range of half to two-thirds that of an adult. Reducing what would have been an applicable adult custodial term by 50% was not arguably too little reduction, it was in fact materially generous to the appellant given that he was a little older than the midpoint of that age bracket when he offended. He was then a week shy of 16 years 8 months.

The only real question on the appeal therefore is whether the adult custodial term of 90 months the judge had in mind was manifestly excessive. This was a category 3B rape but with elements of harm falling not far short of category 2 and the lead sentence for the rape had to reflect properly the two other offences. The category 3B range is 4 to 7 years, starting point 5 years. There were aggravating features in addition to the other offences, namely the location, the complainant’s bedroom where she should feel safest, persistence and determination even though it could not be said to have been planned offending, and findings made against the appellant as part of the Youth Court’s determination of guilt that he was manipulative and that he knew of and exploited the complainant’s vulnerability from a background of mental health frailties.

Taking account of those factors and the need to take account of two other offences a significant upwards adjustment from the starting point of 5 years was, we think, inevitable and justified even allowing for the appellant’s previous good character and positive character evidence.

We do not accept Mr Johashen’s primary submission on the elements of manipulation and vulnerability here, which was that they should not have been treated as aggravating features at all. We agree that there was no finding of particular vulnerability, which would have placed the rape offence into a higher category, or of the specific targeting of such vulnerability, an aggravating feature identified in the guideline. The relevant findings by the Youth Court nonetheless did make this case more serious than it would have been without those findings. The judge was entitled to consider that aggravated the offending as, when pressed, Mr Johashen realistically acknowledged. The judge in fact concluded that the appropriate adult sentence would have been one of 7½ years, but then reduced that by a generous 50 per cent as we have already noted. We might prefer to consider that the upwards adjustments required prior to taking account of mitigation need not have taken sentence above the category 3B range. However, they did, in our opinion, take the matter to the top of that range. The other offences were serious, especially in context the frightening instance of strangulation that became the precursor to non-consensual penetrative sexual offending. In combination those offences and the other aggravating features identified by the judge merited an adult sentence of 7 years before mitigation. Reducing for the appellant’s personal mitigation other than his age at the time of the offences – and that other personal mitigation was real and substantial – would take us to 6 years, which is 72 months, or perhaps 75 months, and reducing from there indicatively by 40% would suggest a possible sentence for consideration of 43 months or perhaps indeed the same 45 months as was imposed by the judge.

It cannot be said, we think, in those circumstances, and although we might have preferred a different way of analysing and calculating the final sentence, that the 45-month custodial term imposed was wrong in principle or manifestly excessive. It did reflect, in our view, and was no more severe than, the appropriate sentence that should have been imposed and was likely to have been imposed if the appellant had been sentenced when aged 16 years 8 months rather than, as actually occurred, after he had turned 18 so as to have to be sentenced as an adult.

For those reasons this appeal is dismissed.