Prison not ‘appropriate’ for man who raped girl, judge says

Sean Hogg, 21, was convicted of attacking a young girl at Dalkeith Country Park in Midlothian, Scotland, near Edinburgh, multiple times between March and June of 2018. Documents presented to the court show that Hogg, of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, had threatened the girl when he was 17, grabbed her by the wrists and forced her to perform sexual acts, according to the BBC.

But Judge Lord Lake told the High Court in Glasgow that while rape was “one of the most serious crimes,” Hogg’s age at the time of the crimes figured in the decision not to give him prison time. After noting that adults over age 25 would usually be sentenced to four to five years in prison, Lake ordered Hogg to complete 270 hours of unpaid community service.

“For the level of seriousness, I have to consider your liability and have to regard to your age as a factor,” the judge told Hogg, the BBC reported.

When Lake told Hogg of what the prison sentence would be for adults over 25, the judge added, “I don’t consider that appropriate and don’t intend to send you to prison.” Lake referenced Scotland’s sentencing guidelines, passed last year, for people under 25. The guidelines favor rehabilitation over punishment.

“You are a first offender with no previous history of prison — you are 21 and were 17 at the time,” Lake said, according to the Telegraph newspaper. “Prison does not lead me to believe this will contribute to your rehabilitation.”

The judge’s sentence of community service instead of prison time has led to blowback from the Scottish Conservatives party and critics who described the “worryingly lenient” sentence as a “total insult” to the girl who was raped.

“This is an extremely serious case and we are shocked this perpetrator has not received a custodial sentence,” Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, said in a statement to the LBC talk radio station. “Given the gravity of this crime and the fact it was tried at the High Court, this sentence appears to us to be worryingly lenient.”

A spokesperson for Scotland’s Crown Office, the country’s public prosecution service, declined to comment to The Washington Post. In a statement to local media, the office said, “As with all cases, the Crown will consider the sentence and give consideration to whether it might be unduly lenient.”

A spokesperson for the law firm Optimum Advocates and Donald Findlay KC, the attorney representing Hogg, told The Post they were not allowed to comment on the case. Findlay told the court on Monday that the firm plans to appeal Hogg’s conviction.

In Britain, most people accused of or convicted of rape walk free. In the year ending March 2020, more than 55,000 rapes were reported to police. Yet, in that same time period, 2,102 prosecutions for rape resulted in only 1,439 convictions. In 2021, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament that he was “sorry for the trauma” that rape victims endured as a result of the “inadequacies” of the criminal justice system.

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In January 2022, the Scottish Sentencing Council announced new guidelines intended “to reduce reoffending among young people, and thereby help to increase public safety.”

“Reflecting compelling scientific evidence on the development of cognitive maturity, the guideline says that a young person will generally have a lower level of maturity, and a greater capacity for change and rehabilitation, than an older person,” the council said in a news release. “For this reason, it states that rehabilitation should be a primary consideration when sentencing a young person.”

Hogg, who was recently found guilty by a jury, was crying during his sentencing in Glasgow on Monday. While Lake noted that the victim’s age and vulnerabilities were “aggravating factors” in the case, the judge said he also had an obligation to consider Hogg’s age at the time of the rapes.

In addition to the community service, Hogg was also placed under supervision and put on the sex offenders’ registry for three years.

Among the critics of the ruling was Jamie Greene, a spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, who have opposed the sentencing guidelines.

“The lack of a prison sentence is a total insult to the young teenage victim in this case,” Greene told the Telegraph.

There have been similar cases in the United States in recent years. In 2016, ex-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner served three months of a widely criticized six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. In November 2021, a New York man who pleaded guilty to rape and sexual abuse for assaulting four teenage girls during parties at his parents’ home was sentenced to eight years’ probation after a judge concluded that time behind bars for the man “would be inappropriate.”

Karla Adam contributed to this report.