Appeal court reserves judgment in Anthony Lyons case

THE Court of Criminal Appeal (CCA) has reserved its decision over what further sentence should be imposed on a businessman who sexually assaulted a young woman as she walked home.

The CCA had ruled earlier this month the sentence imposed in July 2012 on Anthony Lyons was too lenient following an appeal from the DPP.

Lyons (52), from Griffith Avenue in Dublin, was sentenced last year to six years but had five-and-a-half years of the sentence suspended for the attack on the then 27-year-old woman in the early hours of the morning of October 3rd, 2010. He has since been released and faces being returned to prison if the CCA decides the sentence should be increased.

The court heard that Lyons rugby tackled her to the ground within 500 yards of his home Griffith Avenue in the early hours before sexually assaulting her, trying to put his hand over her mouth to stop her crying out.

He originally denied the assault but later claimed he attacked the woman due to a combination of cholesterol medication and alcohol.

On top of the sentence, he was also ordered to pay €75,000 to the victim but the court heard today the money remains in her solicitor’s client account as she had not elected to receive it at this point.

Patrick Gageby SC, for Lyons, said the court must take into account the totality of the hardship not just on the defendant but on his innocent family who had been subjected to intense publicity, particularly from tabloids which referred to him as a fiend, a beast and a monster.

Presiding judge John Murray today remarked it appeared the DPP was indifferent to the fact that a human being was being referred to this way on a matter still before the courts.

Mr Gageby said the publicity included unwarranted attention on his wife and children, involving pictures of their home and of the four children, two girls and two boys. There was also a campaign of intimidation by a local man who beset their home, blared car horns and knocked on their door.

Journalists had also repeatedly called to the door and to neighbours’ doors.

The eldest son complained of his mother being “hounded by the media” including being followed to school to collect her youngest ten-year-old son. The Mail newspaper published a picture of the eldest son and a personal college email address.

The Mail on Sunday had a piece in which the family were pictured on holidays in Dubai shortly after Lyons was released from his sentence. One photo included Mr Lyons with his then 15-year-old daughter.

His 19-year-old daughter had been contacted by a journalist through Facebook who appeared to show empathy for their situation but she realised this was just a ruse once the journalist started asking if her father had bought her a car.

The younger daughter said a local man followed her on the bus and home from school and one day drove very fast past her as she was about to get into her mother’s car.

The children complained that a lot of taxis were either parked outside the house at various times or drove very slowly past it.

Ten days after his release from prison, their father had to leave home to live in England such was the attention and because he nearly had a serious car accident due to the harassment, counsel said. He has notified police there he is on the sex offenders register and must inform them of his movements, including if he spends more than 12 hours in one house where there are children.

Lyons’s aviation business, which he had been the principal of, continues but he can no longer even play a back-office role because of what has happened and a number of people have left the job, counsel said.

Mr Gageby said his client was a decent hardworking man who was thought very highly of before his “very public and spectacular fall from grace”. However, counsel said, “the level of publicity has marked him almost as an outlaw in a age when such a concept seems medieval”.

Caroline Biggs SC, for the DPP, accepted that undue media attention could be a mitigating factor but the court had to take into account the seriousness and aggravating factors of this case including the time of night it occurred (2.30am), the level of violence used, that the victim’s dress was pulled down and she was digitally penetrated. While there was no updated victim impact report, the DPP was asking that the original once also be considered.

The three-judge court said it would notify the parties when it intends to give its decision.