A sentencing judge errs in declining to find good prospects of rehabilitation where the only stated reason is the offender's maintenance of innocence after trial, without proper regard to other favourable subjective circumstances such as lack of criminal history, community support, and conditions of custody. Maintenance of innocence is by far from necessarily inconsistent with unlikelihood of reoffending. The objective seriousness of sexual intercourse without consent should be assessed by reference to all the circumstances of the particular offence, not by applying blanket determinations that one form of sexual intercourse is always more serious than another.
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