An appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions against an "unduly lenient" three-year sentence imposed on the human rights campaigner Vincent McKenna for sexual abuse of his daughter, Sorcha, can proceed, the Court of Criminal Appeal has decided.
The three-judge court rejected a submission by McKenna's lawyers that the DPP's application for a review of sentence had been brought too late. It found that the application had been brought in time and fixed the hearing of the appeal for March 12th next.
In November 2000, at Monaghan Circuit Court, Judge Matt Deery sentenced McKenna to three years' imprisonment for a series of sexual assaults on his daughter, Sorcha, between 1985 and 1993. He described the 19 offences of indecent assault and 12 offences of sexual assault as continuous abuse, "nearly routine".
Sorcha McKenna had requested that her anonymity be lifted so that she could speak out. In victim impact reports, she said that she wanted to encourage others who had been abused to speak out also.
Giving the court's decision yesterday, Mr Justice Geoghegan, presiding, said that under the Criminal Justice Act an application such as that before the court should be made on notice to the convicted person within 28 days from the day on which the sentence was imposed. If, in calculating the 28 days, the date on which the sentence was imposed was to be excluded, the application had been quite definitely made in time, he said.