Baby rape sentence 'too lenient'

James Taylor was jailed for five years

A judge who jailed a man for five years for raping a 13-month-old girl failed to take account of the gravity of his offences, appeal judges have heard.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd said the sentence also failed to take account of society's condemnation of such crimes and the deterrence effect.

He added that Lord Reed may have acted on a flawed psychological report.

The Crown has appealed the sentence imposed on James Taylor, 44, on the grounds that it was unduly lenient.

Taylor, from Grangemouth, was jailed at the High Court in Dunfermline in September last year.

The sentence was greeted with anger by children's charities, who said they had expected a life sentence.

I think it is fair to say there is a serious question mark over the conclusion regarding the level of risk Lord Advocate Colin Boyd

He had admitted a number of offences committed between August 1998 and December 2002.

More than 2,800 indecent images of children were discovered on his computer during a raid on his home.

Most of the images had been downloaded from the internet, but computer specialists found some images which were of Taylor's own making.

They included graphic pictures of Taylor himself raping a baby girl, whose age at the time was estimated to be 13 months.

Lord Reed said he would have been jailed for much longer had it not been for a psychologist's report which suggested there was a low risk of him reoffending.

'Substantially higher'

On Tuesday, Mr Boyd told judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh that the sentence was "unduly lenient".

He said: "It failed to take account of the gravity of the offences committed and failed to mark society's condemnation of the type of activity and failed to have due regard to issues of deterrence."

Mr Boyd, Scotland's senior law officer, said there was "a serious question mark" over the conclusion in the expert's report regarding the level of risk.

"It is higher, possibly substantially higher, than that which the court proceeded upon."

The Crown has appealed against the sentence

He said the Crown became aware of concerns about the psychological report after the sentence sparked a great deal of publicity.

Two other experts have since prepared critiques of the original report.

"It is certainly sufficiently concerning for me to place these before the court itself," he said.

Defence lawyers argued that these reports should not be placed before the appeal court as they were not in front of the original sentencing judge.

However, that argument was rejected by Lord Justice General Lord Cullen, sitting with Lord Hamilton and Lady Cosgrove.

Mr Boyd said the expert's evidence could only be one factor in sentencing.

Deviant behaviour

He said Taylor had progressed from adult pornography websites to those featuring younger and younger girls.

"That, in my submission, is the description of sexually deviant behaviour which is being fuelled from one plateau to another by this sex drive which is not being satisfied by the stage he is in at the time," he argued.

"If you apply some commonsense to that, this would appear to be somebody who is at risk of committing further offences unless the intervention of the conviction is of sufficient force to bring him to stop," he said.

The appeal continues.