Midlands man fails in bid to reduce jail sentence for 'odious' sexual abuse of daughter

A paedophile who subjected his daughter to “persistent” and “odious” sexual abuse when she was aged between seven and 12 has failed to have his seven-year sentence reduced on appeal.

Oliver Berry (68) of Newtown Lawns, Mullingar had pleaded not  guilty to 25 counts of indecent assault relating to Sharon Berry between 1980 and 1986 but was convicted following a trial in June 2023.

He was handed a seven-year sentence by Ms Justice Patricia Ryan on July 25, 2023 to run consecutive to a prison term he was already serving for the sexual abuse of another of his daughters, Jennifer Berry.

Berry’s sentencing hearing was told he abused his daughter Sharon up to three times a week and also subjected the child to physical violence. She ran away from home when she was 12 years old.

The 68-year-old was previously jailed for ten years in 2018 after a Central Criminal Court jury convicted him of 104 counts of both raping and sexually assaulting Jennifer between December 1982 and December 1994. She was aged between seven and 19 years at the time. This sentence was subsequently increased by three years following a successful appeal by the State.

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Berry maintained his innocence after the trial and Ms Berry's mother, who has since separated from Berry, supported him and gave evidence in his defence during the trial.

In dismissing Berry’s appeal against his sentence at the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy described the offending as “odious” and said it was accompanied by threats, bullying and an atmosphere of violence.

He said Sharon Berry was a child who was entitled to the love and support of her parents. The “persistent indecent assaulting” of the young girl three times a week could not but fall into the most serious category of its kind, the judge said.

He said the thrust of this appeal had been a suggestion that the trial judge had failed to apply the totality principle when imposing a consecutive seven-year sentence.

Mr Justice McCarthy said the circuit court judge in the case was very experienced and there was no reason to doubt she took into account all the factors when imposing sentence, including the issue of totality.

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He said the Court of Appeal found the trial judge had made no error given the gravity of the offences involved.

Mr Justice McCarthy said life expectancy is now much longer than it has previously been and despite Berry’s medical issues it wasn’t a case that there was no “light at the end of the tunnel”.

He said Berry’s medical issues are those that many people cope with and were not so severe that they gave rise to a breach of the totality principle.

At Berry’s appeal hearing, Maurice Coffey SC had argued the sentencing judge had made an error in failing to reduce Berry’s term of imprisonment to take into account the impact of this sentence running consecutively to a sentence not due to expire until March 2028, when the accused will be almost 71.

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He argued the sentence was “disproportionate” in light of Berry’s age and ill health.

However, David Perry for the Director of Public Prosecutions argued the judge had made no error.

He said there were very serious aggravating factors in the case, which had involved “unrelenting abuse” on a young daughter, and very limited mitigation. He said the overall sentence imposed was “fully in line” with what would be within a sentencing court’s discretion.