The Court of Appeal upheld prison sentences of seven and four years for a man convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl he looked after while her father was at work, despite finding them “particularly lenient”.
The Attorney General had challenged the sentences, which the Limassol Criminal Court imposed after a full trial, as “manifestly inadequate”.
The man was convicted on two counts of child sexual abuse. He was jailed for seven years for engaging in a sexual act with a child under 13 and four years for causing a child to witness sexual acts.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the Criminal Court had properly weighed the circumstances of the case and the aggravating and mitigating factors, and had made no error of principle or departed from case law. It said the sentence was at the limit of the permissible range but did not fall outside the bounds that would justify its intervention.
The prosecution had argued that the lower court gave too little weight to the seriousness of the offences, the circumstances in which they were committed, the aggravating factors and the need for deterrence. It also said the court overlooked the psychological after-effects on the girl and her distress at being cross-examined and made to relive what had happened, while giving too much weight to mitigating factors and the man’s personal circumstances.
The offences
The abuse took place in 2018. The man, a neighbour and friend of the girl’s father, lived with his family in the flat above hers in the same building. He was reportedly the only person her parents trusted to look after her when nobody else was there.
When her father went to work and there was no one else to care for her, the girl went to the man’s home, where he was alone because his family were at work. The Criminal Court found that he looked after her and that she came to see him as a good person, which created “a position of trust, authority and influence” over her.
One day in summer 2018, the girl went to his home, as reportedly often happened, and he tried to sexually abuse her but did not succeed. In shock, because she did not understand what was happening to her, she pulled up her clothes and ran home without saying anything to him.
She did not tell her mother, who was at home, because she was frightened and did not know how her parents would react, the ruling said.
Around the same time, on several occasions when she was playing alone on her veranda and he was alone on his balcony, he exposed his genitals to her, knowing she could see him.
A vulnerable child
The court found that the girl’s father was dependent on alcohol, her mother had psychiatric difficulties, and the father had been violent within the family.
She was left alone for several hours a day because the rest of the family worked, and she barely attended primary school. The court said she was less emotionally mature than other children her age, struggled to recognise danger and trusted others more easily, which made her particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse.
