Guardian News and Media/London
Former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall’s jail sentence for a string of sexual offences, including one attack on a nine-year-old girl, has been doubled to 30 months.
The court of appeal in London extended the presenter’s 15-month jail term after ruling that his original sentence was inadequate and did not match his crimes.
The lord chief justice, Lord Judge, said Hall had aggravated his prolonged pattern of serious sexual assaults by initially protesting his innocence and criticising his victims.
In May Hall admitted 14 counts of indecent assault against girls as young as nine between 1967 and 1987.
Hall, 83, kept his head bowed as he listened to proceedings via video link from HMP Preston yesterday morning, and showed no reaction as the decision was announced.
The case was referred to the court by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, who argued that Hall’s sentence was unduly lenient as it failed to adequately reflect the gravity of his offending and the public concern about such crimes.
Judge, sitting alongside the appeal court judges Lady Justice Macur and Lady Justice Rafferty, spent more than an hour detailing Hall’s attacks on 13 victims before reaching his verdict that the 15-month sentence was too lenient.
He told a packed courtroom that Hall’s public protestations of innocence had had a particularly damaging effect on his victims, including one who considered withdrawing her complaint to police over fears she would not be believed.
“Whatever legal advice the offender has been given, he knew the truth,” said the judge. “He knew he was guilty of molesting these girls. He is an expert of media manipulating and used the media for the purpose of attempting to influence jurors and attacking the 13 women.”
Outside court, Grieve said he was pleased with the outcome. “This was an abuse of power and he did it over a very long period of time. When he was confronted with this, his reaction was to denounce people and say they were all liars,” he said.
Grieve had earlier told the judges that the individual sentences for each count should have been made to run consecutively, “so that the total sentence passed reflected the culpability of the offender, the harm caused and the culpability of others”.
“It appears to me the sentence was unduly lenient and the overall criminality was not reflected,” he told the court.
Grieve argued that Hall’s “prolonged and repeated” offending, the number of victims and his gross breach of trust were serious aggravating factors that should be considered when deciding whether his sentence was unduly lenient.
Victims’ charities had argued that the broadcaster got off lightly and 165 people complained to the attorney general’s office that the original sentence was too lenient.
Hall was described by the Crown Prosecution Service as an “opportunistic predator” after he admitted a string of historic sex attacks.
Judge Anthony Russell QC, at Preston crown court, said he had sentenced Hall based on the maximum sentence available at the time the crimes were committed, which was two to five years. The maximum sentence has since been increased to 10 years.
Preston crown court heard that Hall confronted one girl in the staff quarters of a hotel within minutes of her being chosen to appear as a cheerleader on his BBC game show It’s a Knockout.