Woman convicted of sexually abusing son has sentence reduced by two years

A woman who sexually abused her son from when he was an infant up until the age of 11, in what a judge described as “a huge betrayal of trust”, has had her jail sentence reduced by two years at the Court of Appeal.

Suzanna Hassett (66), of Westbourne Grove, Clondalkin, Dublin, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of indecent assault on dates between 1984 and 1987, from the year her son was born until he was three.

She also pleaded to four counts of sexual assault on dates between 1992 and 1995 when her son was aged between seven and 11. Hassett has no previous convictions.

Fionn Daly waived his anonymity at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last year to allow his mother to be named.

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In his victim impact statement, Mr Daly said he was still trying to come to terms with the “extreme abuse” he was subjected to. “One of the hardest things to come to terms with is how young I was when it started. I was still in nappies when it started,” he said.

Admitted offending

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that he made a complaint to gardaí in 2017 in relation to incidents which occurred between 1992 and 1995. After Mr Daly went to gardaí, Hassett entered counselling during which she admitted her offending during the 1980s.

The investigating garda told prosecuting counsel that the victim recalled lying in bed beside his mother. She then took his hand and used it to touch her genitals. Mr Daly recalled similar incidents took place on days when he was not in school and his father was at work. It was estimated that these incidents took place two or three times a week over an 18 month period.

Judge Martin Nolan sentenced Hassett last November to a total of eight years with the final 18 months suspended on strict conditions, including that she come under the supervision of the Probation Service for 12 months post-release.

At the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, Ronan Kennedy SC, for Hassett, said Judge Nolan failed to set a headline sentence. He argued that the overall sentence failed to take into account all the mitigating factors in the case and was “simply too high”.

Mr Kennedy acknowledged that Hassett was a woman who had committed very grave offences against her son and that this was, as the trial judge noted, a “very significant betrayal of trust”. He said the age of the child when the offences occurred brought with it a “deep sense of revulsion”.

‘Distorted view’

However, counsel said Hassett had been abused and sexualised from a young age, and had a “distorted view” of her own sexuality to the extent that she had no idea of the damage she was doing to her son by acting in this way. He said she was clearly psychologically vulnerable.

He submitted that Judge Nolan did not take sufficient account of these factors.

Court of Appeal President Mr Justice George Birmingham said the failure to set a headline sentence “isn’t determinative of the issue”. Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy noted Judge Nolan is an “extraordinarily experienced trial judge”.

“He attached a high degree of moral culpability because of the massive betrayal and also the harm done so you can take it he placed it at the upper end. It’s not too difficult to interpret that,” she said.

Counsel for the State said the Director of Public Prosecution’s position was that the sentence imposed by Judge Nolan was the correct one.

After rising for a time, the three judges returned to deliver their judgement in the appeal against the severity of sentence.

‘Tiered system’

Regarding the argument that no headline sentence was set, Ms Justice Kennedy said the court has repeatedly said the absence of a headline sentence is not an error in principle. However, she noted that in cases such as this where the offending is serious and there is much mitigation, the court is of the opinion that a “tiered system” would have been helpful.

In relation to the sentence, she said the court found it was “simply too high”.

Quashing the original sentence, she said the court considered the appropriate headline sentence in respect of the first series of offending, when the child was up to aged three, to be five years. Taking into account the mitigating factors, the court reduced this to three years.

She said the court found the second term of offending, when the child was aged between seven and 11, was of a “serious nature” and was “prolonged and persistent”. She said the court marked the heading sentence for this at five years, reduced to three years with mitigation. Both sentences are to run consecutively.

The overall sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal was six years with the final 18 months suspended.