Sexual Concerns

This was a very serious offence that might have attracted a significantly longer term of imprisonment. ‘Threats of violence against public servants doing their duty, particularly involving the use of a firearm, are rightly regarded with revulsion.’ The social workers ‘deserve the full protection of the law’. This episode had plainly had a deeply traumatic effect on the principal victim and an adverse effect on the provision of Social Services generally in that local authority. The fact that this victim had stayed in the house, continuing with her duties until the police arrived, was a measure of her courage and resilience, not a mitigating factor in B.’s favour. Her counsel’s assertion that she posed a low risk of re-offending was contrary to the PSR assessment that had made the point that that B.’s ongoing drug taking made that risk ‘significantly higher’. B. had never before been sentenced to imprisonment. She had had numerous chances to co-operate with probation and to comply with the various community orders which have been made in her case. The fact that she had failed to do so – and was in breach of a conditional discharge at the time of the current offence – ‘undercuts any suggestion that this was a case with “a realistic prospect of rehabilitation” . . . On the contrary, it might be said that by this offending [she] had finally crossed the line’. Any mitigation sought to be derived on account of B.’s mental health needed to be weighed in the light of her drug misuse, ‘the principal exacerbating factor underlying her mental health issues’. The pandemic health crisis had not been a material factor in B.’s crime. As her sentence had been shortened to reflect that consideration, she could not rely on it again to argue for suspension.