Limerick man jailed for raping his younger brother has appeal over sentence dismissed

Graham Daly's appeal against his conviction was dismissed in November and on Tuesday, his further appeal against the severity of his sentence was also rejected.

A Limerick teacher who was jailed for raping his brother has had his appeal against his sentence dismissed.

Graham Daly, 40, was found guilty of seven counts of rape and sexual abuse on his younger brother Thomas Daly, 35, in January 2022 by a unanimous verdict.

The court heard the abuse took place at various locations across two counties in Munster but were primarily committed in the family home in Raheen, Co Limerick, between 1998 and 2002.

Graham Daly was aged between 14 and 18 at the time of the offences and Thomas Daly was between 10 and 14 years.

In 2022, Graham Daly received a custodial sentence of eight and a half years for his offences but later appealed both his conviction and sentence.

His appeal against his conviction was dismissed in November and on Tuesday, his further appeal against the severity of his sentence was also rejected.

Coleman Cody SC for Graham Daly argued there were two grounds of appeal in his client’s application to the court against his sentence.

He claimed the “trial judge erred in fact and in principle in assessing the offences before the court as being of such a severity, that they warranted a headline of sentence in the 10 to 15 years range”.

He said sentence was “disproportionate and excessive” in all circumstances.

However, on Tuesday morning at the Court of Appeal, Justice John Edwards, Justice Patrick J McCarthy, and Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh said they were dismissing the application.

Appeal judgment

Their judgment read to the court said: “This was not one-off offending. Rather, it was persistent and repeat offending over a considerable amount of time, escalating all the while in seriousness and culminating in both oral and anal rape at a point when the appellant was on the threshold of attiring his majority (he was almost 18).

“The victim was vulnerable. The age differential between offender and victim was exploited.

“That gave rise to a breach of trust component,” and that “very significant trauma was caused to the victim which persists to this day".

In conclusion they said: “We therefore find no error on the part of the sentence judge in her selection of the 10 to 15 years range as being the appropriate one within which to locate the gravity of the appellant’s offending conduct had he been an adult at the time of his offending”.

The three-judge court said they had “carefully considered” the sentence and there was no “hard or fast rule” as to the amount of the discount afforded to the offender, however, each case is individual.

They added “the biggest difficulty faced by the appellant was the fact that he did not have available to him the additional very substantial discount that would have been available to him had he pleaded guilty”.

The sentencing judge, they said, had in this case discounted by approximately 35% from the headline sentence of 13 years which she considered appropriate in the case of an adult offender.

In Mr Daly’s case, she handed down a custodial sentence of eight and a half years because of his age at the time of the offences.

The Court of Appeal concluded they found no error in the sentencing judge’s approach and dismissed the appeal.

Mr Daly smiled over at this mother and brother throughout the short hearing.

At the sentencing hearing on January 24, 2022, his legal team told the court that their client did not accept the verdict of the court.

Thomas Daly was not in court to hear Tuesday morning’s judgement -—he had attended all other hearings.