Tag: was the friend of a daughter of the respondent. She would sometimes stay overnight with her friend at the respondent’s house. It became apparent that

On 24 September 2004 the Court of Criminal Appeal increased the sentence of a child rapist from five to eight years (see Nos 262 and 264 for the controversial background).  The court’s opinion is available on the Scottish Courts website at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/XC1062.html.  Since the media reporting of this case has been far from full and the trial judge was pilloried by both media and politicians at the time of his verdict, it seems worth setting out some material from the Court’s opinion in order to show the issues involved.  The key (and highly unpleasant) facts relating to the respondent’s offences are set out in the Court’s opinion as follows:

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