Child-sex offenders' sentences increased

Three men convicted of raping or abusing children had their sentences increased yesterday after the Attorney General argued that they had been dealt with too leniently by the courts.

Lord Goldsmith QC urged the Court of Appeal to impose harsher sentences to reflect public concern over the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

Three of the Attorney General's referrals to the Court of Appeal for unduly lenient sentences involved the sexual abuse or rape of children. A fourth attack concerned the rape on an adult woman that was witnessed by her child.

In one case, a father had set up a video club in his garden shed where children went to watch pornographic films.

The man was jailed for eight years for raping two young girls and for offences of child cruelty against another child.

One girl was told she would be killed if she told anyone. The other girl was raped after the man took her for a ride on his motorcycle. Lord Goldsmith saidthe man should have been sentenced to at least 12 years, if not life imprisonment, for "a very bad case" of introducing children to an atmosphere of sexual depravity.

He asked Lord Justice Mantell, Mr Justice Bell and Mr Justice Andrew Smith to apply new rape sentencing guidelines laid down last week by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf.

At the end of the hearing, the judges increased the sentences in each case.

The eight-year sentence on the video club rapist was increased to 13 years.

A man sentenced to a three-year community rehabilitation order for offences involving children will now have to serve a three-year jail sentence, and a six-month sentence on another child abuser was increased to 12 months.

In the case of the adult woman who was raped, the man's six-year sentence was increased to eight years.