MOHAMAD ZABIR HARITH BIN BIDIN v Pendakwa Raya

Case Significance

Illustrates the structuring of multiple sentences and the totality principle in sentencing for repeated sexual offences against a child under section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017, the court upholding an aggregate sentence that reflected a sustained course of offending without being crushing.

This High Court decision is one of the consolidated appeals against sentence by an appellant convicted in the Sessions Court of multiple sexual offences against a child under section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 (Act 792), committed on separate occasions. This record concerns a further set of charges in the group. The appellant contended that the cumulative effect of the several sentences was excessive and that they ought to have been ordered to run concurrently rather than consecutively. The court addressed the totality of the sentence and the manner in which multiple sentences should be structured. It held that where offences are separate and distinct, committed on different occasions, the court is entitled to impose separate sentences and to order that some run consecutively, subject to the totality principle that the aggregate must not be crushing or disproportionate to the overall criminality. Emphasising the gravity that the Act attaches to sexual offences against children — a twenty-year maximum and liability to whipping — and the primacy of the public interest, it held that the aggregate sentence reflected the seriousness of a sustained course of offending against a child and did not offend the totality principle. Reviewing the sentencing trend under the Act, the court was not persuaded that the Sessions Court's sentence was excessive, illegal or improper, and considered that a deterrent sentence was warranted. It reasoned that the totality principle operates as a check that the aggregate is just and not crushing, not as a rule requiring concurrency wherever multiple offences share a common victim or setting, and that a sustained pattern of separate offences against a child properly attracts an aggregate that marks each violation. The court accordingly dismissed the appeal against sentence. The judgment illustrates the structuring of multiple sentences and the totality principle in sentencing for repeated sexual offences against a child.