R v Miah 2025
Between 30 July 2020 and 27 November 2020, M, of previous good character, communicated via social messaging applications Kik and WhatsApp with whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl called Abbey James. Abbey James was in fact an adult decoy operating as part of the vigilante group Justice for Kids. M's messages quickly became sexual. He sent pictures of his penis, videos of himself masturbating, and pornographic videos of adults engaging in sexual activity. M told Abbey James he wanted sexual intercourse with her and suggested booking a hotel room. He encouraged her to masturbate and told her to delete their conversations so nobody would discover their communications.
On 27 November 2020, Justice for Kids confronted M at his workplace and detained him until police arrived. M immediately confessed to officers that he had been speaking with an underage child, that conversations were sexual, and he had sent images of himself masturbating. M gave no comment in interview. His mobile phone was examined and WhatsApp conversations were recovered.
M pleaded guilty to three charges of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, attempting to cause a child to watch or look at an image of sexual activity, and attempting to cause/incite a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity, before Thames Magistrates' Court on 21 April 2024 and was committed for sentence.
On 17 February 2025 at Snaresbrook Crown Court, M received concurrent suspended sentences of 20 months for two years with programme and rehabilitation requirements, a 10-year sexual harm prevention order, and 10-year notification requirements.
M appealed the duration of the sexual harm prevention order after the single judge granted leave.
Held
Appeal allowed.
The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and substituted a 5-year sexual harm prevention order for the 10-year order imposed by the Crown Court judge.
The court addressed whether the judge erred by setting the sexual harm prevention order duration to match the notification period. Whilst sexual harm prevention orders and notification requirements should operate in tandem and not conflict, it does not follow that their durations must be identical as they are different things serving different purposes.
Notification requirements are determined by statute and apply automatically on conviction, whereas sexual harm prevention orders are inherently discretionary requiring individual assessment of necessity and proportionality under sections 345 and 346 of the Sentencing Act 2020.
The court must consider what duration is necessary to manage the specific risk of sexual harm posed by the individual defendant. The judge either adopted an approach of fixing duration to match notification requirements, which represents an error per R v Hanna, or arrived at an unnecessarily long and disproportionate length having regard to the risk posed.
The court accepted the appellant's mitigating factors: previous good character, four-year gap without reoffending, full compliance with bail, circumstances of offending, full confession, guilty plea, remorse, pre-sentence report assessment, and suspended sentence compliance prospects warranted a 5-year order. A 5-year order would provide three years of monitoring after suspended sentences end, allow police specialist monitoring during the 10-year notification period, and permit police to apply for extension under section 350 of the Sentencing Act 2020 if risk remained.
The other aspects of the sexual harm prevention order and the other sentences received by M, including the suspended sentence orders with programme and rehabilitation requirements and the 10-year notification requirements, remained unchanged.
Reproduced with permission of Reed Elsevier (UK) Limited, trading as LexisNexis.
View the full case document here, with links to related legislation and similar cases.
