Inferior Number Sentencing - assault
[2023]JRC179
Royal Court
(Samedi)
29 September 2023
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Before :
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R. J. MacRae, Esq., Deputy Bailiff, and
Jurats Le Cornu and Berry
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The Attorney General
-v-
Bradley Robert James Withe
Sentencing by the Inferior
Number of the Royal Court, following conviction at Assize trial to the charge
on the First Indictment and following a guilty plea to the charge on the Second
Indictment
First Indictment
Second Indictment
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1 count of:
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Assault (Count 1).
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Age: 20.
Plea: Not guilty to the First
Indictment. Guilty to the Second
Indictment.
Details of Offence:
First Indictment
The Defendant and the Victim had
been in a relationship for less than a year. The Defendant’s behaviour became
violent, coercive and controlling towards the Victim. He would physically prevent the Victim
from leaving the house to go to work as he was jealous that she worked with
mostly male colleagues. The Victim
would call in sick on these occasions and make excuses for her absence to
placate the Defendant. He was
violent towards her and limited her contact with friends and family.
On 17 February 2022 the Defendant
used the Victim’s personal cleaning products that she had bought. She was annoyed about this and
confronted him. The Defendant got
angry with her and the Victim gathered her belonging to leave the house. The Defendant locked all the doors so
that she was trapped. The Victim
went upstairs. The Defendant
followed her, grabbed her and pushed her down the stairs. The Victim got back up and the Defendant
pushed her again. The Victim sent a
message to her mother and sister saying that she was scared, and that the
Defendant would not let her leave for work. The Victim tried to leave, and the
Defendant pushed her down the stairs before a struggled ensued on the stairs.
The Defendant pulled the
Victim’s jacket off and ran upstairs with it. The Victim ran after him to try to get
her phone back as it was in the pocket of her jacket. She started to hyperventilate due to
panic, was drenched in sweat and was sick in the toilet. The Defendant then pushed the Victim to
the floor put one hand over her face and mouth and the other on her neck. She was choking and crying. She managed to get away from the
Defendant and went downstairs. The
Defendant’s mother arrived at the house and the Victim ran out of the
house. The assault left the Victim
with multiple bruises to her legs and arms.
Second Indictment
On 30 July 2022, the Victim 2 (a
male member of the public) was in a queue for food on Mulcaster Street. The Defendant arrived and made a
determined effort to push into the queue behind him and in front of two women
who were also in the queue. Victim 2
told the Defendant that the queue started behind the two women and the
Defendant and the Victim 2 exchanged words. The Defendant left the queue before
returning and punching Victim 2 once to the face with a clenched fist without
warning. This caused Victim 2 to
fall backwards onto the ground and roll over. The Defendant immediately left the
area. When police located the
Defendant, he had removed his t-shirt and denied being the man who punched Victim
2. Victim 2 sustained swelling and
soreness to his left cheek from the assault.
Details of Mitigation:
Guilty plea for the common
assault on Second Indictment. Youth.
No previous convictions at time of
committing the assault on First Indictment.
Previous Convictions:
None at the time of the First
Indictment.
Conclusions:
First Indictment
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Count 1:
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12 months’ probation and 240
hours’ Community Service Order (as an alternative to 18 months’
youth detention)
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Second Indictment
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Count 1:
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20 hours’ Community Service Order (as
an alternative to 2 months’ youth detention), consecutive to Count 1 on
the First Indictment.
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Total: 260 hours’ Community Service Order
(as an alternative to 20 months’ youth detention) and a 12 month
Probation Order.
Restraining order sought for a
period of 2 years from date of sentence.
Costs order sought in the sum of
£1,500.
Sentence and Observations of Court:
First Indictment
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Count 1:
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12 months’ probation and 180
hours’ Community Service Order (as an alternative to 12 months’
youth detention)
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Second Indictment
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Count 1:
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20 hours’ Community Service Order (as
an alternative to 2 months’ youth detention), consecutive to Count 1 on
the First Indictment.
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Total: 200 hours’ Community Service Order
(as an alternative to 14 months’ youth detention) and a 12 month
Probation Order.
Restraining order made for a
period of 3 years from date of sentence.
Costs order made in the sum of
£1,500.
Ms L. B. Hallam, Crown Advocate.
Advocate J. W. R. Bell for the Defendant.
JUDGMENT
THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:
1.
Bradley
Withe, you are 20 years of age and were 19 when you assaulted your then
girlfriend who was 18 years old at the time.
2.
We should
say at the outset that were it not for your age and the protection given to you
by statute under the Criminal Justice (Young Offenders) Law 2014 then
you would now be beginning a custodial sentence.
3.
Your
former girlfriend, who we will refer to as your partner in these remarks, was
in a relationship with you for approximately 8 months. As the relationship progressed, and as
the Jury heard, you became violent, coercive and controlling towards her,
isolating her from her friends and family.
She told the jury that the relationship between you was good at the start,
then it changed. She said that you
were very jealous, you were not happy that she was working in an environment
where she was the only girl. She
told the Jury “he didn’t like me working with men, he did not
like me socialising with my friends.
He told me it was no good for me to be with them”. She said “the longer we were
together the more he did not like me to go out with my friends”. She told the jury about a time in a
nightclub when she was talking to a male friend who you approached, picked up
by the neck of his shirt and threw over, leading to you being thrown out of
that nightclub. She told the jury
about times when you were not keen for her to go to work and you would try and
persuade her not to go, and sometimes you would not let her go and she would go
back upstairs having got ready for work.
She spoke about times when you assaulted her. She said there were times when she tried
to end the relationship and you threatened to kill yourself or hurt her. You would shout and explode and say
things about her mother and that your partner’s mother did not care for
her.
4.
The Crown
say this was a typical pattern of domestic abuse; with the abuser trying to
isolate the victim from her family and from her friends and, indeed, your
partner ended up voluntarily removing men from her telephone if they were
Snapchat contacts of hers. She did this
because she did not want you to be upset.
She said “I wrote all the passwords in a book at his
Mum’s house so that he would not stress about what I was doing”. She said she ended up not speaking to
her friends because you made her think they did not like her, and she believed
everything you said.
5.
That was
the background to an assault that took place on 17 February last year at your
home - but also your partner’s home as she had moved into your home
approximately one month before the assault. After an argument about something
insignificant, you prevented her from leaving the house for work, trapping her
within, taking her coat and bag from her and then assaulting her. You told her that nobody cared about
her, that no one could hear her crying.
She sent a message to her mother after the assaults began saying that
she was scared and that you would not let her leave for work. She asked her mother to come and get
her. She activated the video
function on her mobile telephone and the jury heard some of what transpired between
you – only audio as the telephone was in her pocket - but they heard you
refusing to let her leave the house, they heard her saying that she wanted to
go to work and that you were hurting her, and they heard (on your
partner’s account) her being pushed down the stairs which happened on
more than one occasion.
6.
During this
prolonged assault, you pushed her onto the floor, putting one hand over her
face and another on her neck. She described
herself as choking and crying, but shortly thereafter she managed to get
downstairs when her mother arrived.
7.
Your
partner sustained bruising, including fingerprint bruising to her arms, and she
told her mother that day what had happened to her and she confided to a friend
at work shortly thereafter about the way in which she had been assaulted.
8.
Not long afterwards
you left to go and live in Scotland.
Your partner only complained to the police when you returned to the
island approximately two months later.
Although in March of last year you apologised to your partner by text
for what you had done, you pleaded not guilty when you were charged with grave
and criminal assault. You contested
the matter before the jury. The
jury unanimously found you guilty of common assault.
9.
Whilst on
bail for this offence, indeed only two weeks after you were charged at Court
and bailed, you committed another assault – punching a stranger in the face
at 2am in the morning on 30 July 2022 whilst he was queuing for food in
Mulcaster Street. This was a wholly
unnecessary and in our judgment unprovoked assault. When you were stopped by the police you
lied about what you had done - although ultimately you pleaded guilty after you
had been positively identified as the offender, which was shown clearly by CCTV
footage which we have seen.
10. You gave no assistance to the police in your
interviews in relation to either offence and you lied in evidence before the
jury.
11. In the Pre-Sentence Report prepared for today,
we note that you still reject the verdict of the jury and blame your victim for
what happened. You take no
responsibility for what you did. Accordingly
you are unable to appreciate the impact your actions had on your victim. You have no previous convictions, although
you have appeared before the Parish Hall in relation to various matters that
you admitted.
12. You are in employment - which is positive - and
have a good job. The Probation
Officer notes that you hold a number of attitudes which support domestic abuse,
as listed in the report. You are at
moderate risk of reconviction and there is a risk that you will behave
aggressively again in any future personal relationship. These findings have led to the
recommendation of a Probation Order with a condition that you undertake the
Jersey Domestic Abuse Programme to tackle the causes of your offending.
13. We have considered the statement of your victim
whose life has been affected by your behaviour. She experienced months of
sleeplessness. Her relationship
with her mother has been affected by your attempt to persuade her that her
mother did not care for her. She is
often too scared to walk home alone and she seeks a restraining order against
you, and she says that she is deeply affected by the abuse she suffered at your
hands. We grant that order in the
terms sought by the Crown for the period of 3 years from today. If you breach that order then you will
be charged with a separate offence and brought to Court accordingly.
14. Domestic abuse committed by an adult, as you
were, albeit an adult protected by the terms of the Criminal Justice (Young
Offenders) Law 2014 is unacceptable and the abuse that you subjected your
partner to was unacceptable. We
have had regard to the leading case on the appropriate approach to such cases
in Jersey, namely the case of Coelho v AG [2020] JRC 216 and in that
case, at paragraph 26 of the judgment, the Superior Number listed various
aggravating features as identified by the Sentencing Council for England and
Wales and adopted in that case in this jurisdiction. Those aggravating factors are to a
significant extent present in this case. Firstly, “an abuse of trust and
an abuse of power”. In
this case you did abuse the trust placed in you by your partner. Secondly, that the Victim was “particularly
vulnerable”. Well you had
made your partner vulnerable by the previous assaults and controlling and
coercive behaviour to which we have referred. Thirdly, “steps taken to prevent
the victim reporting an incident” or “obtaining assistance”. This is what you did on the day of the
assault by effectively trapping the victim in your home. And finally “a proven history
of violence or threats by the offending in a domestic context” - in
this case there was such a history (to which we have referred) involving
reprehensible conduct on your part with your partner the victim.
15. We have also considered the provisions of the Domestic
Abuse (Jersey) Law 2022, recently enacted which came into force on 21 June.
In particular we have considered
whether or not in this case you committed a “relevant offence”
for the purpose of Article 1 of the law and a relevant offence means, inter
alia,:
“(b) any other offence or
combination of offences under Jersey law, whether statutory or customary,
that –
(i) involves
the offender behaving abusively towards a person aged 16 or over to whom the
offender is personally connected, and
(ii) consists
of more than one act or failure to act.”
16. We have considered the definition of “abusive”
in Article 1 and we are in no doubt that the offence of common assault in this
case, bearing in mind the circumstances we have described does amount to a “relevant
offence” for the purposes of this Law as it consisted of abusive
behaviour consisting of assaults and controlling and coercive behaviour which
we have described, including preventing your partner from going to work,
trapping her in the house, and assaulting her repeatedly. Accordingly in those circumstances the
Court’s powers to make orders under the Domestic Abuse (Jersey) Law
are engaged in this case, but we agree in the circumstances of this case that
it is inappropriate to make a domestic abuse protection order under Article 5
the Law. We agree with the Crown
that the test is not met as there is no suggestion of resumption of the
relationship so as to place your victim at risk of further abuse and we have on
balance decided not to impose the notification requirements under Article 11 of
the Law. We have made that decision
in the light of the restraining order that we have made, the contents of the
Pre-Sentence Report and the terms of the Probation Order that we are going to
make.
17. We agree with the Crown that, on balance, you
do enjoy the protection of the Criminal Justice (Young Offenders) Law 2014
to the extent that we are unable to find that the offence is so serious that
only that only a custodial sentence can be justified in this case. But the Community Service Order that we
impose is a direct alternative to custody, so you should understand that if you
fail to complete the order that we are about to impose, or the connected
Probation Order, then you will be brought back to this Court, the Royal Court and,
absent exceptional circumstances, sentenced to a term in custody. We should also say that were you an
older offender then the circumstances of this case would have led to an order
being made equivalent to a much longer custodial term.
18. The sentences we impose are as follows. For the first assault, 180 hours’
Community Service, equivalent to 12 months’ custody. For the second assault, 20 hours’
Community Service consecutive, equivalent to a 2 month consecutive sentence
yielding a total of 200 hours’ Community Service, equivalent to 14 months
in custody. On both offences we
make a concurrent order of 12 months’ probation with a condition that you
attend such courses as directed.
19. We make a restraining order for 3 years as
indicated.
20. We order that you pay a contribution to prosecution
costs in the sum of £1,500 at the rate of £300 a month with the
first payment to be made on 1 November or the Friday before if that falls on a
weekend.
Authorities
Criminal Justice (Young Offenders)
Law 2014.
Coelho
v AG [2020] JRC 216.
Domestic Abuse (Jersey) Law 2022.
Harrison
v AG [2004] JLR 111
AG
v Crabtree [2017] JRC 143
AG
v Horn [2010] JRC 104
AG
v Sudol [2022] JRC 143
AG
v Doran [2020] JRC 129
AG
v Gallie [2017] JRC 104
Crime (Disorderly Conduct and
Harassment) (Jersey) Law 2008