The sentence of a man who was spared jail after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl is to be appealed, Scotland’s Crown Office has announced.
Sean Hogg was 17 when he attacked the schoolgirl at Dalkeith Country Park in Midlothian on various occasions between March and June 2018.
At the High Court in Glasgow earlier this month, Hogg, now 21, was handed a community payback order with 270 hours of unpaid work.
Hogg, of Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, was also added to the sex offenders’ register and placed under supervision for three years after being found guilty by a jury.
Judge Lord Lake said he had considered the guidelines for sentencing under-25s and concluded that imprisonment would not contribute to his rehabilitation.
Scotland’s Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, has now decided that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) should appeal the sentence on the grounds it was “unduly lenient”.
Kenny Donnelly, deputy crown agent for COPFS, said: “Sentence is quite rightly the domain of the independent judiciary. However, the law provides for some limited circumstances in which prosecutors have the right to appeal against sentences.
“The Appeal Court has set a high test to be satisfied for this to happen. The sentence must be unduly lenient, which means that it must be outwith the range of sentences which the sentencing judge, taking account of all relevant factors, could reasonably have imposed.
“The question of Crown appeal against sentence in this case has been carefully considered, and the decision to place this matter before the Appeal Court has been communicated to the complainer through her representative.”
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New guidelines for sentencing under-25s came into effect in Scotland in January 2022.
The Scottish Sentencing Council recommended a more “individualistic approach” to take account of the perpetrator’s life experiences.
The changes were made to help reduce reoffending by focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Rape Crisis Scotland branded Hogg’s sentence “worryingly lenient”.
Sandy Brindley, chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, said at the time: “This is an extremely serious case and we are shocked this perpetrator has not received a custodial sentence.
“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.”
