Court increases Lombard prison sentence

The Court of Criminal Appeal today increased a prison sentence on a unemployed Cork man who sexually assaulted 16 children over 16 months in fast food restaurants, swimming pools and sports grounds in the city.

James Lombard was initially given a 14 year sentence, with the final two years suspended, for the offences at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

But the three judge Court of Criminal Appeal today set aside the two years suspension and replaced it with a sentence of 14 years with one year suspended following an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions against the leniency of the sentence.

James Lombard (aged 37) of Blarney St, Cork was originally given a seven years sentence, with two years suspended and was subsequently given a second seven years sentence to run consecutively with the original sentence imposed on May 31 last year.

He pleaded guilty on November 4 last year to the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl on February 20 last year, while he was on bail on the original charges.

Cork Circuit Criminal Court was told last year that Lombard was convicted in February of sexually assaulting seven boys and in April he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting another seven boys and two girls aged between four and 10.

The court was told that the assaults occurred between May 18, 1993 and August 11, 1994 and many took place in the toilets of fast food restaurants in Cork and involved Lombard targeting young boys on their own.

Lombard was first arrested by gardaí in September, 1994 but fled to England where gardaí located him in jail serving a sentence under a false name.

He was extradited to Ireland in June 2004 and went on trial last February but went on the run for two weeks on the last day of his trial before he was apprehended again by gardaí at Carrigaline in south Cork on February 28.

Today Ms Justice Fidelma Macken, presiding, said the court was of the view that there had been an error in principle and there had been no justification for the trial court to suspend the final two years of the sentence.

The judge said that having regard to an indication from Lombard’s counsel Mr Blaise O’Carroll SC that he is willing to enter a programnme at Arbour Hill prison to assist him the court would suspend the final year of the combined sentence.

Earlier Mr O’ Carroll told the court that he accepted that his client did represent a danger to the community but said that his offences were at the lower end of the spectrum.

Ms Marjorie Farrelly BL for the DPP said that the trial court had failed to give sufficient regard to the fact that there were sixteen different victims and the gravity was not reflected in the total sentence imposed.