R v Steven Southgate

The appellant was convicted, after a four-day trial in the Crown Court at Chelmsford before HHJ Mills and a jury, of one count of making a threat to kill (which related to events on the evening of 9 November 2024) and one count of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship over a period of 2 years and 3 months from September 2022 to December 2024. He was sentenced to a total of 5 years 5 months' imprisonment comprising 3 years for the threats to kill and 2 years 5 months consecutive for the controlling and coercive behaviour. He appeals against that sentence by leave of the single judge.

The victim of the offences was the appellant's then partner, Lucy Mealing. She was a successful individual with a career, her own house and car, and two children from a previous relationship. Her older child was away at university and her daughter (then aged 14) lived at home with her. The appellant did not live with Ms Mealing, though he stayed overnight with her in her home at weekends, and left his belongings there. These included carpentry tools, because he was a skilled carpenter who carried out work at Ms Mealing’s house. He also did jobs for her sister and her mother.

Ms Mealing was financially independent. However, as the sentencing judge said, it is clear that the appellant needed to be the sole focus of her attention. From around a year into their relationship he took repeated and determined steps to ensure that this was the case, bombarding her with text messages wanting to know where she was at all times of the day, what she was doing, and who she was with, and demanding that she send him pictures. She was expected to text him continually and if she did not put a "x" at the end of each text it would lead to an argument. He was consumed with paranoia about who she was with and what she was doing, constantly accusing her of cheating on him. His allegations of cheating were abusive. He would call her a "slag" or use worse epithets, or threaten to slit her throat and send pictures of daggers.

The appellant's obsession with the idea that Ms Mealing might be cheating on him reached new heights when she sent him a wholly innocent picture of a chicken stew that she had cooked for him with the message: "making chicken stew for my boy". He irrationally assumed that the message was intended for someone else, and that this was undeniable proof she was cheating. In the end, she had to throw away the chicken stew. Thereafter he made repeated references to this incident. For some reason he was unable to shake off the idea that this was proof of her infidelity.

When she went on holiday with her daughter, the appellant wanted to know what she was doing the whole time and what she was wearing. When she sent him a photo of what the judge described as “arguably quite modest clothing to wear on a holiday in the sun”, he called her a "slag" and subjected her to a torrent of abusive messages, driven again by his obsession she might be impressing or seeking to impress other men. Over time he gradually separated her from her friends and her support. Eventually she was precluded from seeing her friends at weekends. He would monitor her online status, causing her to remove herself from all social media. When she went to pre-Christmas dinner with work colleagues he messaged her repeatedly wanting to know everything from who she was with to when she was eating to when she was getting on the train home.

When Ms Mealing tried to bring the relationship to an end, the appellant made more threats. He said he would "come and get her" whilst she was asleep. She said that he threatened to slit her throat when she was asleep or gut her like a rabbit. She was frightened because he was a carpenter, a fisherman and a hunter, and left tools everywhere in her house. She said he would remind her with a wry menacing smile that he knew how to use those tools properly. He also monitored her movements, read her diary and turned up unannounced at her address. She was so concerned that on one occasion she hid in the property at the back of the house with the lights off. She also put a tracker under the driver's seat of the appellant's van in order to get some warning of when he was coming round to her house. She had parked her car a street or two away from her address but the tracking device indicated that his van had stopped where the car was parked. She had no idea how he had discovered its location.

On Saturday 9 November 2024 the appellant had been working on the complainant's bathroom. The couple had agreed to go out to dinner because Ms Mealing's daughter was staying with friends. When she came downstairs after getting ready to go out, she found the appellant asleep on the sofa. She woke him up and asked him if he was ready to go. She said if he was too tired they could leave it and get a takeaway. For some reason this enraged the appellant, who screamed abuse at her for keeping him waiting although she had only taken around 20 minutes to get ready. They began to walk out to the car and the appellant got in, but Ms Mealing thought better of it and returned to the house. She told him that she did not want to go out because he was shouting and it would not be a pleasant evening. This part of the argument was captured on ring doorbell footage, with the appellant saying that it was Ms Mealing's fault again. He followed her into the house and slammed the door.

She went upstairs, but he continued to shout at her that he wanted to go out and that she had promised they would go out for dinner. At that point she told him that because he was not calming down, and she was frightened, she did not want to be in the same house as him. She said she knew he would not leave and that she would go to her sister's house. His response was that she would not make it out of the house. When she asked what he meant, he responded that there were plenty of knives down there and she would not make it down the stairs. Although he had threatened her in text messages in the past, this was the first occasion on which he had done so face to face.

She was shaking but began walking from room to room putting things into a bag. The appellant followed right behind her, telling her that she was not leaving the house and that he was going to kill her. He started laughing. She told him she was scared. He responded that she should be scared because she was not going to make it to her 50th birthday. He said: "That is it. Tonight's the night. I've been planning it for ages." That brought on a full blown panic attack.

By then they were in the bedroom. He would not let her out. The panic attack went on for over an hour. Ms Mealing initially screamed at him to get away from her and he replied: "Scream all you want, nobody can hear you." The appellant kept laughing. He sat next to her on the bed and said: "Well, let's talk about how you're going to die tonight." He told her he would like to stab her in the heart because of what she had done to him. An alternative would be putting a bag over her head and suffocating her. Or, he said, his favourite way would be to throw acid in her face and watch her face melt. As she was having difficulty breathing he said: "Oh please don't die on me like this and take that pleasure away from me."

The judge, who it must be remembered had the advantage of presiding over the trial, found that when the appellant did eventually take steps to help Ms Mealing by finding her a bag to breathe into and opening the window, he did so only in order to be able to regain control over the situation, and not from any sense of pity or concern for her wellbeing. The threats continued after Miss Mealing was able to go downstairs and make herself a cup of tea to calm herself down. The appellant said he would be "quite happy to do 25 years for you" and that her daughter would be better off without her. He again said that he would kill her: "Do not think you will ever get rid of me. I will wait and follow you until one day when you're not expecting it. Understand you will die."

Ms Mealing had to resort to reverse psychology to get the appellant to stop. He only started to calm down after she began apologising to him profusely, telling him it was all her fault. However, he still would not let her leave. She was forced to spend the night with him in the same bed and she dared not to go to sleep in case he carried out his threats. He remained in a state of high alert in the days that followed. Eventually she confided in her sister, who went with her to the police.

When Ms Mealing went to the police on 21 November 2024 to report the appellant's behaviour, her phone was continually active. It was the appellant, wanting to know where she was and who she was with. In a moving victim personal statement she described how terrified she remained of the appellant, and the impact that his offending had had on her, including her constant fear that he would kill her in her sleep. She had invested a substantial sum on security measures at her property, including changing the door locks, installing security cameras and even purchasing a rope ladder in case she needed to flee from an upstairs window.

The pre-sentence report indicates that the appellant had been offered the opportunity to complete a programme to explore his behaviour within intimate relationships following his earlier conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on a previous domestic partner, but did not take this up. The author of the report referred to his lack of insight, but said that the more serious aspects of his behaviour could not be attributed to this or to ignorance, rather, it was a deliberate attempt to control and abuse the complainant. In his assessment, the appellant's own attitude and beliefs about entitlement within intimate relationships were the main cause of his offending behaviour.

In a sentencing note prepared by the prosecution it was submitted that the offence of making a threat to kill was one of medium culpability (category B) and category 1 harm because of the very serious distress caused to the victim, with a starting point of 2 years' imprisonment and a range of 1 to 4. The offence of controlling or coercive behaviour was a higher culpability category A offence with two higher culpability factors, conduct intended to maximise fear or distress, and persistent action over a prolonged period. It fell into category 1 for harm, with a starting point of 2 years 6 months and a range of 1 to 4 years. In both cases, there was the statutory aggravating factor of the appellant's previous convictions for assault, one of which, as we have said, was an assault on a previous domestic partner whom he had punched in the face whilst she was sitting on a kitchen worktop, causing an injury to her nose. The author of the pre-sentence report stated that it was recorded that the victim in that case had raised concerns about the appellant's increasing anger issues 5 months into their relationship, which were similar to the concerns raised by Ms Mealing.

The defence provided a sentencing note prior to seeing the victim personal statement. This contended that the coercive control offence was somewhere between medium and higher culpability, but the harm was category 2, and that the threat to kill offence fell within category B2. Ms Gwilym, on behalf of the appellant, now accepts that the threat to kill offence fell within category B1 on the basis of the very serious distress expressed by the victim, but she maintains that the coercive control offending was wrongly categorised for harm. She submitted that there was no evidence of serious psychological harm, that the level of distress experienced was not very serious in the context of offending of this nature, and that there was not a fear of violence on many occasions.

In the light of the content of the victim personal statement and the complainant's evidence, not only in her ABE interviews but at trial, which the trial judge would have had the benefit of seeing, we are satisfied that this was harm category 1 for both offences.

The judge aptly described the threat to kill offence as a very serious, horrible and frightening offence. He placed it in category B1 with a starting point of 2 years. He increased this to reflect the severity of the offence, the multiple threats to kill in multiple ways (each of which was highly distressing) and the complainant's particular vulnerability because she was suffering from a serious panic attack at the time. He also referred to the Guidelines on Domestic Abuse which made it clear that offences of this nature committed in a domestic setting are particularly serious. He rightly treated the previous conviction for domestic assault as an aggravating factor. He made it clear that because he had reflected the other threats to kill the complainant in the sentence for coercive and controlling behaviour, he was not going to uplift the sentence on this count to take account of those threats.

In her lucid oral submissions Ms Gwilym nevertheless submitted that there was too great an elevation from the 2-year starting point. She submitted in particular that the panic attack suffered by Ms Mealing was a symptom of the distress that she suffered, which was something that put the matter into category B1 in the first place, and therefore there was an element of double counting. She pointed out that the elevation from the starting point of 2 years to 3 years and 3 months, before the adjustment for totality, meant that the judge had elevated the sentence by more than 50 per cent from the starting point and she submitted that none of the factors that the judge identified justified taking it up so high.

Attractively though those submissions were presented to us by Ms Gwilym, we are satisfied that there was nothing wrong with the sentence which the judge reached in relation to the threats to kill. Having referred to such personal mitigation as there was, whilst noting the appellant's lack of insight and continued attempts to blame the victim, the judge reached a sentence of 3 years and 3 months before adjusting the overall sentences downwards for totality. That was well within the range for an offence falling within Category B1, the category into which Ms Gwilym now accepts the judge was entitled to place it.

So far as the offence of controlling and coercive behaviour was concerned, the judge agreed with the prosecution’s categorisation of that offence as an A1 offence. He therefore started at 2 years and 6 months' custody. He uplifted the offence for the previous relevant conviction, and after taking account of the mitigation arrived at a sentence of 2 years and 8 months, only 2 months above the starting point. He said that after considering the Sentencing Council Guideline on Totality he had decided that the sentences should be consecutive. Whilst the offences were arguably of a similar kind, in that they both arose in a domestic context and involved the making of threats, this did not tell the whole story. The threats to kill on 9 November 2024 were made out of pure malice and not in the context of control generally. In any event, he regarded the offending as sufficiently distinct in context as to require separate recognition. However, in order to reflect the degree of similarity and to produce a proportionate sentence, he was going to reduce the overall tariff by 6 months (3 months on each offence.)

Ms Gwilym submits that even if, contrary to her primary submission, the judge adopted the correct category and starting point for the coercive control offence, he failed to have sufficient regard to totality, resulting in a sentence which was manifestly excessive. Again, she makes a complaint about double counting, this time for the domestic context in which the offending occurred. The threats were all of a similar nature, and whilst the threats to kill on 9 November represented an escalation in the appellant's conduct, this was all part and parcel of a continuing pattern of behaviour. Indeed the threats to kill came towards the very end of the coercive and controlling relationship. In principle, therefore, this was not a case for imposition of consecutive sentences. Ms Gwilym submitted that the threats were of a very similar nature, pointing out the similarity between the threats to slit Ms Mealing's throat that were sent in the text messages, and some of the threats articulated on 9 November.

Alternatively, Ms Gwilym submitted that if consecutive sentences were warranted there was an insufficient downward adjustment for totality. She submitted that if the judge had taken the alternative approach of passing concurrent sentences, but elevating the sentence passed on the more serious offence of threats to kill to reflect the overall criminality, it would not have been appropriate to have reached the sentence that he did.

Attractively though those submissions were made by Ms Gwilym, we find ourselves unable to accept them. In our judgment, the appellant can count himself fortunate that the judge did not put the offence of threats to kill into category A1. Although there was no actual violence used and no visible weapon, the prolonged, graphic and repeated threats to kill, using different methods, while Ms Mealing was in the throes of a long panic attack and effectively imprisoned in her own home, especially when viewed against a background of serious coercive control in domestic context, were more than enough to have elevated this offending into the higher culpability category. The pre-sentence report indicated that there was no real remorse and a lack of insight, with continued victim blaming. Even if the offence stayed in category B1, a sentence towards the top end of the sentencing range was plainly merited. There was little mitigation.

Likewise, there was nothing wrong with the judge's categorisation of the coercive control offence which fell squarely within category A1. We repeat that the judge had the great benefit of presiding over the trial and was well able to assess for himself the seriousness of the impact that this offending had on Ms Mealing.

Whilst another judge might have structured the sentence differently, the judge was entitled in principle to pass consecutive sentences for the reasons that he gave and, in our judgment, he made a sufficient downward adjustment to reflect totality. Standing back and considering how the sentencing might have been structured, had the judge taken the threat to kill as the lead offence and elevated the sentence for that offence to reflect the overall criminality involved, we consider that he could easily have justified a sentence of 5½ years with a shorter concurrent sentence on the coercive control offence. The overall tariff of 5 years and 5 months cannot therefore be described as manifestly excessive. For those reasons, this appeal is dismissed.