Businessman's jail sentence for sex attack too lenient, court rules
A wealthy businessman jailed for six months for a violent sex attack is to go back behind bars.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) won an appeal against the jail term imposed on aviation boss Anthony Lyons on grounds of undue leniency.
Counsel for the State, Caroline Biggs SC, told the Court of Criminal Appeal the six-month custodial sentence did not reflect the gravity of the offence, the impact on the victim and the impact on society.
Mr Justice John L Murray, presiding, ruled the trial judge had been lenient when he suspended all but six months of a six-year sentence for sexual assault.
He said the mitigating factors could not in principal justify the custodial sentence having regard to the gravity of the offence.
The convicted sex offender will be sentenced again next week.
Lyons was sentenced to six years – with five and a half years suspended – by Judge Desmond Hogan in July 2012 for attacking and sexually assaulting a woman in the early hours of the morning of October 3, 2010.
The aviation broker from Griffith Avenue in Dublin, had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the sexual assault of the 27-year-old victim.
Lyons admitted the attack – in which the victim was rugby tackled to the ground - but claimed he was overcome with an “irresistible urge” due to a combination of alcohol, cholesterol medicine and cough syrup.
