"This was repeated offending against multiple victims, despite being on police and then court bail. You pursued girls younger than you, no doubt because they were a little in awe of you and also a little afraid. Therefore, you were more able to bend them to your wants and desires without a thought for what each of these young girls themselves wanted."
"The principles to be applied on an application under section 36 of the 1988 Act are well established and have been summarised as follows: i. The judge at first instance is particularly well placed to assess the weight to be given to competing factors in considering sentence. ii. A sentence is only unduly lenient where it falls outside the range of sentences which the judge at first instance might reasonably consider appropriate. iii. Leave to refer a sentence should only be granted by this Court in exceptional circumstances and not in borderline cases. iv. Section 36 of the 1988 Act is designed to deal with cases where judges have fallen into gross error: (see for example Attorney-General's Reference (Azad)[2021] EWCA Crim 1846 ;[2022] 2 Cr App R(S) 10 , at paragraph 72 in a judgment given by the Chancellor of the High Court."
" In our judgment, the applicable principles are clear. ... There is, in our view, no reason why the distinction in levels of culpability should be lost merely because there has been an elapse of time which means that the offender is an adult when sentenced for offences committed as a child."
"28. Fourthly, in a case where the sentencer must consider multiple offences by the child offender, the chronology and circumstances of the offending will sometimes (though not always) enable the sentencer to focus on the likely sentence at the time for the offending as a whole. ... 30. Lastly, where the offender has committed offences both as a child and as an adult, it will commonly be the case that the later offending is the most serious aspect of the overall criminality and can be taken as the lead offence(s), with concurrent sentences imposed for the earlier offences. In such circumstances the key considerations for the court are likely to be an assessment of the extent to which the offending as a child aggravates the offending as an adult, and the application of the principle of totality."
"i) Whatever may be the offender’s age at the time of conviction and sentence, the Children guideline is relevant and must be followed unless the court is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so. ... iii) The court must take as its starting point the sentence which it considers was likely to have been imposed if the child offender had been sentenced shortly after the offence. ... vi) the starting point taken in accordance with (iii) above will not necessarily be the end point. Subsequent events may enable the court to be sure that the culpability of the child offender was higher, or lower, than would likely have been apparent at the time of the offending. They may show that an offence was not, as it might have seemed at the time, an isolated lapse by a child, but rather a part of a continuing course of conduct. The passage of time may enable the court to be sure that the harm caused by the offending was greater than would likely have been apparent at that time. Because the court is sentencing an adult it must have regard to the purposes of sentencing set out in section 57 of the Sentencing Code. In each case, the issue for the court to resolve will be whether there is good reason to impose on the adult a sentence more severe than he would have been likely to have received if he had been sentenced soon after the offence as a child."