The Jelenia Góra Regional Court sentenced a man to four years’ imprisonment for committing sexual offences involving violence against one victim for four years and another for three years, including attempting to rape both girls. The Court also imposed a 10-year ban on contacting the victims and a ban on approaching them within less than 50 metres.
The judgment was challenged by an assessor from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Jelenia Góra, who alleged that the sentence imposed on the perpetrator of the offences was grossly disproportionate. When initially bringing the indictment, he had sought a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. The Court of Appeal in Wrocław did not accept the arguments presented in the appeal and upheld the challenged judgment.
The Prosecutor General disagreed with this ruling. Acting under his authorisation, Deputy Prosecutor General Robert Hernand filed a cassation appeal against the judgment.
In the Prosecutor General’s view, the sentence imposed on the convicted man is grossly disproportionate to the social harmfulness of his acts and the circumstances in which they were committed. The Prosecutor General argued that, for committing sexual offences against the victims over several years—when their ordeal began, they had only just turned 10—the court imposed a sentence of only four years’ imprisonment, thus only slightly exceeding the statutory minimum penalty for such crimes, namely three years’ imprisonment. He pointed out that the acts were directed against people close to the convicted man—the victims were his nieces—and against vulnerable persons in a difficult life situation. His conduct left a permanent mark on the girls’ psyches and will cause them years of trauma. He stressed that the perpetrator had previously been convicted of an offence against a close relative—abusing his mother—and had a negative reputation in his community as a person who abused alcohol and psychoactive substances. Moreover, his behaviour escalated. He initially sexually abused one of the victims, and then, after the other turned 10, began engaging in similar behaviour towards her as well. The perpetrator brutally exploited his physical advantage, the girls’ inability to properly interpret the behaviour directed towards them, their family ties, and the fact that he lived with the victims, which enabled him to repeatedly commit offences against them.
In filing the cassation appeal, the Prosecutor General requested that the judgment be set aside insofar as it concerned the sentence and that the case be remitted to the Court of Appeal in Wrocław for reconsideration in that respect.