The moment the Court of Appeal read the victim impact statements
The first thing to understand about this case is the moment that mattered most. It was not the original sentencing. It was not the guilty plea. It was the reading of what those teenage girls had to say about what a 45-year-old man from Sunderland did to them, in a hotel room and in a car, over a period of time, while they were children.
When Detective Constable Hanna Liddle of Durham Constabulary addressed the Court of Appeal, her words were not legal argument. They were the work of a police officer who had sat across from those girls:
“The consequences of Galsinh’s actions will outlast any sentence but having seen the impact of what he has done we believed the sentence should be longer. He subjected the girls to an horrendous ordeal and continues to show no remorse for what he has done. The girls have been incredibly brave throughout this whole process, and we hope this extension to the sentence will help them as they try to find a way forward with their lives.”
That statement captures the entire architecture of the case. The original 12-year-and-three-month sentence was treated as too lenient by both the police and the prosecution. They exercised the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) reference, and the Court of Appeal Criminal Division added six more years, bringing the headline term to 18 years, with an additional year on extended licence, lifetime restraining orders, and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order. Each piece has its own legal story. Each was earned by specific evidence. Each carries a meaning the family of any victim in any jurisdiction should understand.
What follows is a full legal analysis of the case — the charges, the evidence, the investigation, the original sentence, the appeal, the statutory framework, and what an 18-year term with a one-year extended licence actually means. We are writing this as criminal law analysis, not as a case we represent; the UK criminal process is fundamentally different from a US civil personal injury case, and the legal machinery that produced this outcome is the Crown Prosecution Service, the Court of Appeal Criminal Division, and the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme — not a private attorney. We are, however, the kind of firm that studies how criminal evidence is built, how victim impact is proven, and how trial outcomes are earned, and we are writing this in that voice.
What the case was, in plain facts
The defendant was Taranvir Galsinh, 45, of Sunderland. He pleaded guilty to a series of sexual offences against two teenage girls, the details of which, while not described in graphic detail in the public record, are summarised in the court reporting: taking a girl to a hotel and raping her, sexually assaulting her, paying her for sex, sexually assaulting her in a car on multiple occasions, attempting to strangle her on one occasion, and committing a second rape of a different girl. He also forced the second girl to engage in sexual activity in his vehicle, for which he again paid.
The guilty pleas covered the full menu of charges, with the final sentencing reflecting the total catalogue: three counts of rape, one count of intentional strangulation, three counts of paying for sexual services of a girl, one count of sexual assault of a child, one count of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, two counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, and one count of assault by penetration of a child. The complete legal architecture of the case is the statutory framework the prosecution built underneath these counts — and that framework is the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
The statute underneath every count: the Sexual Offences Act 2003
Every charge in this case draws its definition, its elements, and its maximum penalty from the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (SOA 2003), the consolidating statute that governs sexual offences in England and Wales. The Act replaced the patchwork of older sexual offences statutes and created a unified, age-graded framework with a single set of definitions, consent rules, and penalty ranges. The court in this case was applying the modern statute throughout.
The structure of the Act is built on the age of the complainant and the nature of the act. The most serious offences — rape, assault by penetration, and the equivalent “under-13” offences — sit at the top of the scale and carry the highest maximum sentences. The “child” offences (where the complainant is under 16 but the conduct does not fall into the “under-13” categories) sit in the next tier, with the Act’s drafters deliberately treating penetrative offences against children as grave regardless of the precise age within the under-16 band. The “paying for sexual services of a child” offence, which appeared three times in the plea, sits in a separate section designed to target the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The strangulation charge reflects the relatively new offence created by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which inserted a strangulation-or-suffocation offence into the SOA 2003 specifically to address the kind of violence that often accompanies serious sexual offending.
The single most important doctrinal point about the SOA 2003 for understanding this case is the Act’s approach to consent. Sections 74 through 76 of the Act created a series of conclusive and evidential presumptions about consent that shift the burden to the defendant in defined circumstances — including where the complainant was a child under 13, where the defendant intentionally deceived the complainant as to the nature of the act, or where the defendant used threats or violence. These presumptions exist precisely because Parliament recognised that, in the most serious cases, a child complainant cannot be expected to prove a negative (“I did not consent”) when the law has already determined that no consent was possible as a matter of law. For teenage complainants in a case like this one, where the age of the complainant triggers the under-16 child offences, the statutory framework assumes a level of vulnerability that the defence must work around, not against.
The other critical statutory feature is the Sentencing Council guideline on rape and other sexual offences, which the judge was required to follow at the original sentencing. These guidelines set out a structured approach to determining the minimum term for a rape conviction, with the categories of harm and culpability driven by factors like the duration of the offending, the number of incidents, the use of violence, the vulnerability of the victim, and the impact on the victim. The original 12-year-and-three-month sentence was the judge’s application of those guidelines to the facts. The Court of Appeal’s increase to 18 years reflects the Appeal Court’s view that the original judge had been too lenient on those guidelines.
How a rape case reaches a Crown Court in England: the investigation and prosecution chain
The Galsinh case moved through the English criminal justice system in the way serious sexual offence cases now do, and the path it followed is worth understanding.
Durham Constabulary conducted the criminal investigation. Specialist police units handle rape and serious sexual offences; this is a dedicated, properly resourced function within the force, not a general detective on a general desk. The investigation would have included: a detailed account from each complainant taken by a specialist officer in an appropriate setting; forensic examination of any physical evidence; retrieval of hotel records, CCTV from the hotel, mobile phone records, and any financial records showing payments; the taking of a full account from the defendant under caution once charges were imminent; and the compilation of a full case file for the prosecution. Detective Constable Hanna Liddle’s involvement and her statement to the Court of Appeal reflect the continuing role of the investigating officer in the post-sentence advocacy: when a sentence is challenged as too lenient, the police perspective on the case and the victim impact is a key part of the material the Court of Appeal considers.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the prosecuting authority in England and Wales. Once Durham Constabulary had completed its investigation, the CPS — specifically the CPS Special Crime Division or the local CPS Complex Casework Unit that handles serious sexual offences — would have reviewed the file and made the decision to charge. The CPS applies a two-stage test: first, is there a realistic prospect of conviction; second, is a prosecution in the public interest. For a case of this seriousness, the public interest test is essentially automatic; the realistic prospect question is the live one, and the CPS would not have proceeded to charge without a sound foundation in the evidence.
The defendant pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. That matters, because a guilty plea in England and Wales triggers a reduction in sentence under section 144 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The amount of the reduction is calibrated by how early in the process the plea is entered: a guilty plea at the first reasonable opportunity can attract a reduction of up to one-third off what would otherwise be the sentence. The original sentence of 12 years and three months already incorporated that guilty-plea reduction. The Court of Appeal’s increase to 18 years was therefore built on top of a sentence that was already reduced for the plea, which makes the overall uplift even more significant.
The Crown Court at Sunderland or another local centre tried the case. For a guilty plea on a matter this serious, the sentencing hearing would have proceeded on the basis of the prosecution’s outline of facts, the defence mitigation, victim personal statements from the complainants, a pre-sentence report from the Probation Service, and the application of the relevant Sentencing Council guideline.
The original sentence and the Unduly Lenient Sentence reference
The original sentence of 12 years and three months was the product of the original judge’s application of the Sentencing Council guideline to the facts, the guilty-plea reduction, and the original judge’s assessment of the appropriate category within the guideline’s range. The CPS and Durham Constabulary were not satisfied that the original sentence properly reflected the seriousness of the offending, and they exercised a specific statutory power to ask the Court of Appeal to review it.
That power is the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) reference, found in section 35 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, as amended. The mechanism works as follows. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), or in cases involving certain serious offences the Attorney General, may refer a sentence to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division on the ground that it appears to be unduly lenient. The reference must be made within 28 days of the sentence being passed. The Court of Appeal then considers the case afresh on the sentencing question: it can quash the original sentence and impose a higher one, or it can leave the original sentence in place. The standard of review is whether the original sentence was “unduly lenient” — not merely whether the Court of Appeal would have imposed a different sentence, but whether the original sentence fell outside the proper range of discretion given the facts and the guidelines.
The ULS scheme is one of the most important safeguards in the English criminal justice system for victims of serious crime. It exists precisely because sentencing discretion is wide and because judges sometimes get it wrong on the lenient side. The fact that the original judge imposed 12 years and three months, the CPS thought that was too low, and the Court of Appeal agreed and increased it to 18 years is the system working the way it was designed to work.
The Court of Appeal Criminal Division’s decision to increase the sentence to 18 years, with an additional one-year extended licence, is the headline outcome. The Court of Appeal does not give detailed reasons in a ULS reference the way it would in a full appeal, but the effect of the decision is the same: the original sentence is replaced by the new one.
What “18 years with a one-year extended licence” actually means
The sentencing structure in this case has two parts, and they mean different things.
The 18-year term is the custodial term — the headline figure. In England and Wales, a custodial sentence of this length is served in a closed prison. The defendant is required to serve the custodial term, and after that the Parole Board considers release on licence. The custody-plus-licence regime replaced the old “discretionary life sentence” structure in 2005 and operates on a simple principle: the judge sets the overall sentence, the custodial term is the part served in custody, and the licence period is the part served in the community under supervision after release. The longer the sentence, the larger the licence period.
The one-year extended licence is a different and more specific tool. An extended licence under sections 226A and 226B of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, as inserted by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, allows the court to require the offender to serve the licence period in the community (after the custodial term) without the Parole Board having the power to release them early. In effect, the extended licence is a period of supervised release that the offender must serve in full. The Court of Appeal added a year of extended licence to the sentence in this case on top of the 18-year custodial term, which means the overall sentence length is 19 years but the part served in the community as a licence period is fixed and must be served.
For a defendant of Galsinh’s age (45 at the time of the original sentencing), the practical effect of the headline number is significant. A person released at the halfway point of an 18-year custodial term would be in their mid-50s. The extended licence then runs for an additional period, during which any breach of the licence conditions is a criminal offence carrying return to custody. The Sexual Harm Prevention Order (see below) operates alongside the licence for a much longer period.
The lifetime orders: SHPO and restraining orders
The Court of Appeal did not stop at the custodial term. The original sentence included the two orders that follow serious sexual offending for the rest of the offender’s life or for very long periods.
The Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) was introduced by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 and replaced the earlier Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO). It is a civil order made by a court to protect the public from serious sexual harm, and it can be made on conviction or in other circumstances. An SHPO can include any prohibition the court considers necessary to protect the public — for example, prohibitions on contact with children, on using the internet in certain ways, on loitering in certain areas, on working in certain occupations, or on foreign travel. Breach of an SHPO is a criminal offence carrying a sentence of up to five years’ imprisonment. The SHPO in this case will run for an extended period, and the specific prohibitions imposed will be set out in the order itself.
The lifetime restraining orders are made under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. A restraining order made on conviction can prohibit the offender from contacting, approaching, or otherwise behaving in specified ways toward the protected person. The order in this case was made in respect of both girls, and the fact that it was made for life reflects the Court’s view that these victims are at ongoing risk from the offender and that a finite order would not provide adequate protection. Breach of a restraining order is a criminal offence carrying up to five years’ imprisonment, or up to 10 years if the breach involves violence or a threat of violence.
Together, the SHPO and the lifetime restraining orders form a protective architecture around the victims that extends well beyond the custodial term. The combination means that even after the offender is released from prison, the law continues to constrain his behaviour toward the complainants, and any breach sends him back to custody.
The strangulation charge and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021
The strangulation charge in this case is one of the newer offences in the English criminal calendar. The offence of strangulation or suffocation was inserted into the Sexual Offences Act 2003 by section 21 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021 and came into force on 29 June 2022. The offence was created because strangulation in the context of domestic abuse and sexual offending was historically prosecuted under common-law assault or under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, neither of which was a satisfactory fit for the pattern of conduct. Parliament’s intention in creating the new offence was to recognise that non-fatal strangulation in an intimate or sexual context is a serious and distinctive form of offending that often co-occurs with sexual violence and that signals a high risk of escalating harm.
The offence applies to intentional strangulation or suffocation. The maximum sentence on conviction is five years’ imprisonment, or if the offence is charged alongside another offence carrying a higher maximum (as it was here, alongside the rape charges), the court sentences for the strangulation as part of the overall package. The inclusion of the strangulation charge in this case is significant because it is an aggravating factor that the original judge was required to consider under the Sentencing Council guideline, and it is one of the features that the Court of Appeal likely had in mind when deciding that the original sentence was unduly lenient.
Evidence preservation: what the prosecution needed and what the hotel and the car held
The evidence that built this case came from multiple sources, and each source has a preservation question that any reader of criminal cases should understand.
The hotel records are the first major source. When a sexual offence takes place in a hotel, the hotel’s own records become evidence. Reservation records identify who booked the room and when. Key-card access logs show who entered the room and at what time. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) from the lobby, the corridor, and the elevator captures arrivals, departures, and identities. Payment records show who paid, by what method, and on which card. In this case, the hotel records would have been a central part of the prosecution’s case, establishing that the defendant brought the complainant to the hotel, that the room was used, and the timing of the events.
Hotel CCTV and electronic records are not preserved indefinitely. CCTV is typically retained on a rolling basis of 30 days or less, with some systems overwriting more aggressively. Electronic key-card logs are typically retained for a longer period but still on a finite schedule. The window between the offence and the police request for records is therefore a critical one: the longer the delay, the greater the risk that the records have been overwritten or purged. The CPS, in conjunction with the police, will typically secure hotel records as a matter of urgency once an offence is reported, and a hotel that fails to preserve records after being notified by the police faces potential legal consequences.
The mobile phone records are the second major source. Modern prosecutions for sexual offences depend heavily on the defendant’s mobile phone, which contains location data, communications, photographs, internet history, and app usage. The police will obtain the defendant’s phone under a production order and conduct a full digital forensic examination. The complainant’s phone is also examined, both for evidence of the offence and to rebut any defence suggestion of recent fabrication. Text messages and app communications are particularly important in cases involving ongoing sexual contact, as they establish the pattern of offending and the defendant’s continued engagement with the complainant.
The car is the third major source. The defendant used his vehicle in the course of the offending, and forensic examination of the car can produce biological evidence, fingerprints, fibres, and other trace material. The car is a confined space that retains evidence well, and a forensic sweep of a vehicle used in a sexual offence is standard practice.
The complainant’s evidence is the fourth and most important source. In a sexual offence case, the complainant’s account is the central evidence, and the case is built around what the complainant can say about what happened, where, when, and in what sequence. The complainant’s evidence is tested in cross-examination, but the law is clear that there is no requirement for corroboration in a sexual offence case, and the complainant’s evidence alone, if believed, is sufficient to convict.
The medical evidence, where available, is the fifth source. A forensic medical examination of the complainant, conducted by a trained forensic medical examiner, can document injuries consistent with the alleged conduct and can provide important supporting evidence. The medical evidence is supportive, not determinative, and its absence does not undermine a credible complainant’s account.
The defence playbook in a serious sexual offence case — and how each move is answered
In English criminal trials for sexual offences, the defence employs a recognisable set of tactical moves. The prosecution’s job in building the case is to anticipate each of these and to construct the evidence so that the move fails. The playbook in this case, like the playbook in any serious sexual offence case, would have included the following.
The first move is a direct denial of the conduct. “It didn’t happen.” The prosecution’s counter is the totality of the evidence: the hotel records, the phone records, the car, the complainant’s detailed account, any admissions or inconsistencies in the defendant’s own police interview, and the guilty plea itself. In this case, the defendant pleaded guilty, which means the “it didn’t happen” move was abandoned at an early stage. The guilty plea is itself the prosecution’s strongest evidence.
The second move is a partial admission with a different characterisation. “It happened, but it wasn’t rape — she consented.” The prosecution’s counter is the age of the complainant and the statutory framework. Where the complainant is under 16, the question of consent is not always the central issue; the question is whether the complainant was a child at all, and the statutory framework is constructed around that question. The prosecution’s further counter is the evidence of the surrounding circumstances: the payments, the strangulation, the pattern of conduct, the fact that the defendant took a teenager to a hotel rather than conducting any relationship in a way that would be recognisable as consensual.
The third move is to attack the complainant’s credibility. “She’s lying, or she was pressured by the police, or her account has changed.” The prosecution’s counter is the careful, contemporaneous, properly recorded account given by the complainant to a trained police officer, the medical and forensic evidence, the corroborative material from hotel and phone records, and the law on the assessment of complainant credibility in sexual offence cases. The Court of Appeal has repeatedly emphasised that the trial judge is in the best position to assess the complainant’s credibility, and that the jury’s verdict (or, in a guilty plea case, the judge’s acceptance of the prosecution’s case) is entitled to great weight.
The fourth move is to minimise the conduct in mitigation. “It was a one-off mistake, he was drunk, he’s of previous good character, he’s remorseful.” The prosecution’s counter is the Sentencing Council guideline’s treatment of mitigation, which gives limited weight to good character in cases involving grave offending, which discounts expressions of remorse that are not supported by behaviour (and which notes that the defendant in this case “continues to show no remorse”), and which treats the gravity of the conduct as the dominant factor in sentencing.
The fifth move is to attack the investigation. “The police investigation was biased, evidence was not properly preserved, the defendant’s rights were breached.” The prosecution’s counter is the careful, auditable record that the police investigation creates: recorded interviews, continuity of evidence logs, disclosure of unused material, and the discipline of the disclosure process under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.
In this case, the defendant pleaded guilty, so the trial playbook did not run in full. The guilty plea, however, was not entered at the earliest possible stage, and the original sentence already incorporated the reduction for the plea. The Court of Appeal’s increase to 18 years is best understood as the Court of Appeal saying that, even with the guilty-plea reduction, the original sentence was insufficient for the gravity of the conduct.
The Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme in practice: what the Court of Appeal actually does
The Unduly Lenient Sentence reference is a focused and relatively quick procedure. The reference is made on paper by the prosecution to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. The Court of Appeal considers the case without a full hearing in many cases, and the decision is typically handed down within weeks or a few months of the reference. The Court of Appeal’s role is not to retry the case; it is to consider whether the sentence imposed by the original judge was within the proper range of discretion given the facts and the relevant guidelines.
The standard the Court of Appeal applies is that the original sentence was “unduly lenient” — that is, it fell outside the range of sentences that a reasonable judge, properly directing themselves as to the law and the guidelines, could have imposed on the facts. The Court of Appeal does not substitute its own preference for the original judge’s discretion; it intervenes only when the original sentence was outside the proper range.
In this case, the Court of Appeal’s increase from 12 years and three months to 18 years is a substantial uplift. Six additional years on the custodial term is the difference between a sentence that signals serious but not the most serious offending, and one that signals offending at the upper end of the range. The Court of Appeal’s willingness to make that large an increase is a signal that the original judge had materially underestimated either the harm to the victims or the culpability of the conduct, or both.
What the case tells us about how the English system handles serious sexual offending against children
Several features of the Galsinh case are worth understanding in their broader context.
The first feature is the increasing seriousness with which the English system treats child sexual exploitation. The combination of charges (rape, strangulation, paying for sexual services, sexual assault, causing and engaging in sexual activity with a child) describes conduct that Parliament has, over the last two decades, systematically pulled into the criminal law and made subject to the highest available sentences. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 was a consolidation; the subsequent statutes (the Policing and Crime Act 2017, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Online Safety Act 2023) have layered on additional offences and additional protective orders. The current law treats the sexual exploitation of children as a Tier 1 priority for the police, the CPS, and the courts.
The second feature is the use of cumulative charges. The defendant in this case pleaded guilty to multiple counts covering multiple incidents across two victims. The Sentencing Council guideline requires the court to consider the totality of the offending and to ensure that the overall sentence reflects the cumulative nature of the conduct, rather than allowing multiple offences to be treated as if each stood alone. The original sentence, and the Court of Appeal’s revised sentence, both reflect that approach.
The third feature is the use of protective orders alongside the custodial term. The Sexual Harm Prevention Order and the lifetime restraining orders in this case are not incidental to the sentence; they are part of the sentence architecture. They reflect the Court’s view that the protection of the victims and the public requires ongoing legal constraints on the offender’s behaviour well beyond the custodial term.
The fourth feature is the role of victim impact. The victim personal statements from the two girls, and the statement from the investigating officer, were part of the material the Court of Appeal considered. The sentencing process in England and Wales is not just a calculation of the offender’s culpability; it is also an acknowledgement of the harm done to the victims, and the Court of Appeal’s increase to 18 years was as much about recognising the impact on the victims as it was about recalibrating the offender’s punishment.
The human cost and the long road
The case is, at its core, about two teenage girls whose childhoods were taken from them by a 45-year-old man. The legal process produced a finding of guilt, a sentence that reflects the gravity of the conduct, and a set of protective orders that will constrain the offender’s behaviour for decades. None of that undoes what was done. The sentence does not give the girls back the time that was taken. The restraining orders do not heal the trauma.
What the criminal justice process can do is two things. It can hold the offender accountable, publicly, for what he did. And it can create a legal architecture of protection and supervision that lasts longer than any one victim’s recovery.
Detective Constable Liddle’s statement acknowledges the long road the girls still face: “we hope this extension to the sentence will help them as they try to find a way forward with their lives.” That is the honest end-point of a criminal case like this one. The law does its work. The victims do theirs. The two are not the same work, and the law cannot do the victims’ work for them.
What this case would mean in a different jurisdiction
We are writing this from the perspective of a US-based trial firm, and we want to be honest about the limits of our direct relevance. This is a UK criminal case prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service, with the sentence determined by a Crown Court judge and reviewed by the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. Attorney911 is a US firm that handles civil personal injury cases; we do not practise criminal law, we do not appear in UK courts, and we did not and do not represent anyone in this case.
What we can do is the work that the law of any jurisdiction requires of serious trial lawyers: study the evidence, understand the proof problems, and articulate the legal architecture that makes a case winnable. The doctrines in this case — the Unduly Lenient Sentence reference, the protective order architecture, the digital and forensic evidence chain, the victim impact in sentencing — are all doctrines that serious injury lawyers work with in some form in every jurisdiction, because they are the doctrines of how the law takes a victim’s harm seriously.
If you or someone you know has been the victim of sexual violence, the most important thing to do is to report it to the police as soon as it is safe to do so. The English system provides a range of support services, including Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs) and specialist sexual assault referral centres (SARCs). The first contact should be the police, or if the survivor is not yet ready to involve the police, a specialist support organisation that can help the survivor think through what to do next.
Evidence preservation: a checklist for any survivor thinking about reporting
For any survivor of sexual violence reading this, the most important practical points about evidence preservation are the following.
Report as soon as you can. The longer the delay between the offence and the report, the greater the risk that evidence has been lost. CCTV is typically retained on a rolling 30-day basis; hotel records may be retained for longer but are not permanent; mobile phone records are retained by the phone company for a defined period, often 12 months.
Preserve your phone. The phone contains text messages, app communications, photographs, location data, and internet history that may all be evidence. Do not delete messages or apps, even if they are difficult to look at. The police will arrange for the phone to be examined in a forensically sound way.
Preserve any physical evidence. Clothing worn at the time, bedding, towels — anything that may contain biological or trace material. Place items in a paper bag (not plastic, which can degrade biological evidence) and bring them to the police when you are ready.
Do not clean the location. If the offence happened in a specific place (a hotel room, a car, a flat), do not clean it. The police will arrange for a forensic examination, and any cleaning you do before that examination can destroy evidence.
Write down what you remember, while you remember it. A contemporaneous account of what happened, written in your own words in your own time, is a powerful piece of evidence. The account can be added to, corrected, and expanded as you remember more; it does not have to be perfect or complete to be valuable.
Keep a record of all the professionals you speak to. Doctors, counsellors, support workers, police officers. Their records of your account can be part of the evidence, and their names and contact details are important for the prosecution to follow up.
Ask for an ISVA. Independent Sexual Violence Advisors are specialist support workers attached to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and they are there to help you through the criminal justice process. You do not have to navigate the system alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme?
The Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme is a statutory power, found in section 35 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, that allows the Director of Public Prosecutions or, for certain serious offences, the Attorney General, to refer a sentence to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division on the ground that the sentence imposed by the original judge was unduly lenient. The reference must be made within 28 days of the original sentencing. The Court of Appeal then considers the case on the sentencing question alone and can quash the original sentence and impose a higher one. The scheme is one of the most important safeguards in the English criminal justice system for victims of serious crime, because it gives the prosecution a structured route to challenge a sentence that does not properly reflect the gravity of the offending. The increased sentence in the Galsinh case is the most recent high-profile use of the ULS scheme in a serious sexual offence case.
What is the Sentencing Council guideline for rape?
The Sentencing Council guideline for rape and other sexual offences sets out a structured framework for sentencing in adult and child rape cases, with a focus on the harm caused to the victim and the culpability of the offender. The guideline identifies categories of harm (from Category 1, the most serious, to Category 3) and a range of starting points and minimum terms within each category, with adjustments for aggravating and mitigating factors. Aggravating factors that increase the sentence include: the use of violence or weapons; the duration of the offending; multiple incidents; the vulnerability of the victim; the impact on the victim; the breach of trust; and, in cases involving children, the age of the child and the pattern of the conduct. Mitigating factors that may reduce the sentence are limited, and the guideline gives particular weight to a guilty plea entered at the earliest opportunity (which can attract a reduction of up to one-third).
What is the Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO)?
A Sexual Harm Prevention Order is a civil order introduced by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. It replaced the earlier Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) regime. The court can make an SHPO on conviction of a sexual offence, or in other defined circumstances, and the order can include any prohibition the court considers necessary to protect the public from serious sexual harm. Common prohibitions include: restrictions on contact with children; restrictions on internet use; restrictions on certain types of employment; restrictions on foreign travel; and restrictions on loitering in certain areas. The duration of the order is determined by the court and can run for a fixed period or for life. Breach of an SHPO is a criminal offence carrying up to five years’ imprisonment.
What is the difference between a custodial term and a licence period in English sentencing?
A custodial sentence in England and Wales has two parts. The first part is the custodial term, which is the time the offender must spend in prison. The second part is the licence period, which is the time the offender spends in the community under supervision by the Probation Service and the police after release. The Parole Board decides when the offender is released from the custodial term into the licence period (subject to the Parole Board’s power to release). An extended licence is a licence period that the offender must serve in full, without the Parole Board having the power to release early. The combination of custodial term plus licence period is the overall sentence imposed by the court.
Does English law have a statute of limitations for rape?
English law does not have a statute of limitations for rape or for any other serious criminal offence. Prior to 2003, there was a six-month time limit for certain common-law sexual offences, but the Sexual Offences Act 2003 removed that time limit for the offences it created. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 went further and abolished all time limits for any offence that is also a sexual offence. The practical consequence is that an offence of rape can be prosecuted at any time after it is committed, regardless of how much time has passed. This is one of the most important features of the modern English system for survivors of sexual violence: the absence of a time limit means that a survivor who comes forward years or decades after the offence can still seek justice through the criminal courts. The most serious sexual offences in England and Wales can be prosecuted without any time limit at all, and the law was deliberately designed that way.
What is the strangulation offence created by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021?
The offence of strangulation or suffocation was inserted into the Sexual Offences Act 2003 by section 21 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2021 and the strangulation offence came into force on 29 June 2022. The offence applies to intentional strangulation or suffocation and carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. The offence was created because non-fatal strangulation in an intimate or sexual context was historically prosecuted under common-law assault or under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, neither of which was a satisfactory fit. The new offence recognises strangulation in the context of domestic abuse or sexual offending as a serious and distinctive form of violence that often co-occurs with sexual offending and that signals a high risk of escalating harm. The strangulation charge in the Galsinh case was an aggravating feature of the overall offending.
What is the role of the Crown Prosecution Service in an English rape case?
The Crown Prosecution Service is the prosecuting authority in England and Wales. The CPS makes the decision to charge in any criminal case, applying a two-stage test: first, is there a realistic prospect of conviction; second, is a prosecution in the public interest. For a serious sexual offence like rape, the public interest test is essentially automatic, and the live question is the realistic prospect of conviction. Once a charge is brought, the CPS prosecutes the case in the Crown Court, presenting the evidence to the court and arguing for conviction and for an appropriate sentence. Specialist CPS units (the Special Crime Division and the local Complex Casework Units) handle serious sexual offence cases, and the CPS works closely with the police throughout the investigation and prosecution. The Director of Public Prosecutions, who heads the CPS, is one of the office-holders who can make an Unduly Lenient Sentence reference under section 35 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
What are the support services available to a survivor of sexual violence in England?
A survivor of sexual violence in England has access to a range of specialist support services, both within the criminal justice system and outside it. Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs) are specialist support workers attached to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service who help the survivor navigate the criminal justice process, from the initial report through to the trial and beyond. Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) provide medical, forensic, and therapeutic support in a single setting. Specialist counselling and therapy services are available through the NHS and through specialist voluntary-sector organisations. The charity Rape Crisis provides a national helpline and local support services. The Surviving Economic Abuse project provides support for the financial consequences of abuse. The criminal justice system does not replace the need for therapeutic and practical support, and the survivor is entitled to both.
How does a guilty plea work in English criminal law?
A guilty plea in England and Wales is a formal admission of guilt made by the defendant in open court. A guilty plea triggers a reduction in sentence under section 144 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The amount of the reduction depends on the stage of the proceedings at which the plea is entered: a guilty plea entered at the first reasonable opportunity can attract a reduction of up to one-third off the sentence that would otherwise have been imposed; a guilty plea entered later attracts a smaller reduction. The rationale for the reduction is that a guilty plea saves the cost of a trial, saves the witnesses from the ordeal of giving evidence, and brings finality to the case. The guilty plea in the Galsinh case was entered at the earliest opportunity, which is why the original sentence of 12 years and three months already incorporated the maximum reduction. The Court of Appeal’s increase to 18 years was therefore an increase over a sentence that had already been reduced for the plea.
What is a victim personal statement, and how does it affect sentencing?
A victim personal statement is a statement made by the victim of a crime, or by a family member in the case of a deceased victim, that describes the impact of the crime on the victim. The right to make a victim personal statement in England and Wales is established by the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime, and the statement is read or considered by the court before sentence is passed. The Court of Appeal is required to take victim personal statements into account when reviewing a sentence on an Unduly Lenient Sentence reference. A victim personal statement is not a plea for a particular sentence; it is the victim’s account of how the offending has affected their life, and it is one of the most important ways in which the criminal justice system recognises the harm done to the victim.
What happens to the offender after release from prison?
An offender released from prison in England and Wales is released on licence for the remainder of the original sentence. The release is supervised by the Probation Service, and the offender is subject to licence conditions that may include a requirement to reside at an approved address, a requirement to report to the Probation Service, restrictions on travel, restrictions on contact with certain people, and other conditions tailored to the offender’s risk. Breach of a licence condition is a criminal offence carrying return to custody. Where the sentence includes an extended licence (as it did in the Galsinh case), the offender must serve the extended licence in full and is not eligible for early release by the Parole Board. Where the sentence is supported by a Sexual Harm Prevention Order or a restraining order, the offender continues to be subject to the prohibitions in those orders for the duration of the orders, which can run for life. The combination of licence, SHPO, and restraining order means that the offender’s behaviour remains subject to legal constraint for decades after release.
Why is the case being analysed by a US firm?
Attorney911 is a US trial firm that handles personal injury cases in the United States. We are writing this as legal analysis, not as a case we represent. The English criminal justice system is the system that prosecuted the Galsinh case, and the Crown Prosecution Service, the Court of Appeal Criminal Division, and the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme are the institutions that produced the outcome in the case. We are studying the case because the doctrines in it — the protective order architecture, the digital and forensic evidence chain, the victim impact in sentencing, the Unduly Lenient Sentence reference — are doctrines that serious trial lawyers work with in some form in every jurisdiction. We are writing about it because we believe that understanding how the law takes a victim’s harm seriously is the foundation of taking our own clients’ harm seriously. We have not been retained in this case, we have not appeared in this case, and the case is not one we offer to take on.
About our firm
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — is a Houston-based trial firm that handles personal injury cases in the United States, with offices in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont. The firm has been in business since 18 July 2001, with aggregate recoveries of more than fifty million dollars across its practice areas.
Ralph P. Manginello is the Managing Partner. He has been licensed to practise law in Texas since 6 November 1998, more than 27 years, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his Juris Doctor from South Texas College of Law Houston in 1998 and his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and that background shows in how the firm approaches every case: find the facts, tell the truth, and let the record do the work. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas. He is also a member of the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association Million Dollar Member group and the National Association of Italian Lawyers. He was born in New York in 1971, moved to Texas at age five, and was raised in the Memorial area of Houston. He attended Awty International School, then Cheshire Academy in Connecticut, where he was a point guard on the 1989 New England Prep championship basketball team, and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2021. He lives in Houston with his spouse Kelly Hunsicker and their three children, RJ, Maverick, and Mia. He is active in Big Brothers Big Sisters of Houston and produces more than 290 educational videos on personal injury law.
Lupe Peña is an Associate Attorney at the firm. He has been licensed to practise law in Texas since 6 December 2012, more than 13 years, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his Juris Doctor from South Texas College of Law Houston in May 2012 and his Bachelor of Business Administration in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio in 2005. Lupe is a former insurance defence attorney who worked at a national defence firm before joining Attorney911, and that background is the foundation of the firm’s approach: he knows how the other side values a case, he knows how the claim is priced, he knows how the delay tactics work, and he uses that knowledge for the firm’s clients instead of against them. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land, Texas, and lives there now. His practice areas are personal injury, commercial and construction litigation, wrongful death, dram shop, trucking, and car and 18-wheeler crashes.
The firm’s fee structure is contingency-based: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. The firm does not get paid unless it wins. Consultations are free, and the firm operates 24/7 with live staff, not an answering service.
The honest end of the analysis
This case is about two girls, a hotel, a car, and a man who used both to do to them what no sentence can undo. The criminal law did what it could: it made him plead guilty, it sentenced him, and then it gave the Court of Appeal the chance to make the sentence match the crime. The 18-year term, the extended licence, the SHPO, the lifetime restraining orders, the 28-day window that let the prosecution challenge the original sentence, the Sentencing Council guideline that framed the judge’s decision, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 that made the strangulation charge possible, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 that defined every other count — each piece of the legal machinery did the work it was designed to do. None of it heals the harm. All of it constrains the offender and acknowledges the victims. That is the limit of what the criminal law can do in a case like this one, and it is what was done.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The analysis above is general legal commentary, not legal advice for any specific situation; if you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, the right next step is to contact a qualified solicitor (in the UK) or attorney (in the US), to reach out to a specialist support organisation, and to take the time you need to make the decisions that are right for you.
If you are a US reader with a personal injury case of your own, our team is available 24/7. The first call is free, and there is no fee unless we win. Hablamos Español. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911) or contact us online to speak with Ralph Manginello or Lupe Peña about a free consultation. You can also learn more about our practice areas and how we approach brain injury cases, which often arise from the same kinds of traumatic events that lead to criminal prosecution.