A sentencing discretion will miscarry where the sentencing judge proceeds on an incorrect assumption of fact that bears on the offender's moral culpability. When assessing remorse from a psychological report, the court must read the report as a whole, including its final conclusions, rather than selectively relying on passages describing the offender's earlier minimisation of conduct. Consent of the victim, while irrelevant to guilt for sexual offences against children, remains highly relevant to sentence, with sentences at the lowest end of the range appropriate for consensual acts where the age difference is not great.
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