SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Judge O'Grady made the following comments in court:

"It has taken us many months to reach the stage of passing sentence on you. And, of course, that is because this case has by turns been complicated, perplexing, troubling and shocking.

And it is also because sentence in cases such as this -which are mercifully rare – requires me to balance many factors. One of those is naturally to punish you for the cruel and terrible things you have done; but another crucial and anxious factor has been for me to consider and assess what future risk you may represent to the public and what disposal the court may fix upon which will address and, so far as possible, mitigate that risk.

So, for that reason, there has been extensive and exhaustive enquiry into you past, your present and – so far as anyone will ever properly understand it – your motivation for doing what you did.

Much of that information has now come together in the Risk Assessment which I caused to be prepared. And you are well aware that was ordered with the specific purpose in mind of considering whether you presented the kind and level of risk that met the criteria for the imposition of an Order for Lifelong Restriction.

An integral part of the assessment of risk is for the Assessor to opine as to whether the risk mentioned in the Act – the risk that you being at liberty presents to the safety of the public at large is high, medium or low. In this case, the Assessor is of the opinion that you present a Moderate risk of seriously harmful violence.

Before turning to that in some detail, it is important to remind ourselves of this; the Risk Assessment Report is an exercise which is central to the issue of disposal. But it is not the only information upon which the court can and must proceed. There is also before the court the records and evidence of numerous medical and social work professionals who have interacted with you, not only in relation to the events of this case, but over many years. There is too the large body of evidence in relation to what you did and said, how you acted and reacted and your disturbing devious nature. I am bound to take carful account of the findings and reasoning of the Report; but I am not bound to agree with it.

There are certain elements which I am obliged to take into account when fixing upon sentence and, for the avoidance of doubt, let me deal with them now.

I am bound to take into account any adverse life experiences which you have encountered. Let me stress, that in saying that, I do not somehow to imply that the perpetrator is the victim; you are not the victim here.

But there can be little doubt that from an early age you have been a troubled young woman. There have been difficulties with relationships within the family. It would appear that you have had a series of ill advised, unhappy and perhaps abusive relationships with men. These matters cannot be laid at your door. Your problems are to some extent vouched for by those who have engaged with you in medical and social work intervention. The difficulty is that in respect of many aspects of your past, it is impossible to know where the truth lies. In dealing with the influence of your past, the Assessor states ‘One potential limitation is that Ms Docherty has been identified as an unreliable narrator of her own life experiences’.

On the evidence we have heard in the course of this case, that can best be described as a charitable interpretation. One theme running though the evidence of the professionals from whom we heard is that any information from you simply could not be relied upon and subsequent investigation and crosschecking would regularly reveal exaggeration, inconsistency and blatant lies, both great and small. There also emerged in that evidence that your interactions with those professionals were shot through with some cunning. And if proof of that particular character trait were required, one need only look at the remarkable levels of deviousness that you employed in committing and covering up the dreadful treatment you meted out to a child and in attempting to incriminate your wholly innocent ex partner.

I also have to consider your own attitude to your offending. You deny your guilt. You accept no responsibility. You show no remorse or insight. You blame others for the situation in which you find yourself. All this is perhaps unsurprising, but it is a fact which of course bears upon future risk. So too does your history of dishonesty towards and lack of engagement with professionals. This too is a theme running through your adult life. And it is striking and concerning that these very grave offences you committed against the child were committed at a time when in fact you and the child were under supervision by child protection services.

In sentencing you – and indeed in assessing risk – I have of course to take into account the nature of your crimes. What you did to her was not only wickedly reckless – it was staggeringly cruel.

I will not rehearse here the catalogue of abuse to which you subjected her over a period of almost two years. But two instances will suffice to convey the depths of that recklessness and cruelty.

By 6 June 2022 you had already secretly established a pattern of administering drugs, deliberately inducing what you were describing as ‘fits’ and thereafter either seeking medical attention or presenting her at hospital. But on that day you came within a hairsbreadth of killing her. Her condition – a condition that you deliberately contrived – was so critical that she had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance and during that frantic journey a paramedic had to use all his skills to pull her back from the very point of death. We know this because we heard it. We know this because we saw it. And we saw it because you filmed it. Your response to the child being on the brink of death was to film it. In other words, you came close to filming your own killing of the child.

On 16 February 2023 she was in Borthwick ward of the Hospital for Sick Children, again as a result of an emergency admission. And she was there because, yet again, you put her there. But it appears that even that was not enough for you. Because nurses, already suspicious of you, saw you draw a curtain round her bed, detected unusual movement and then heard the popping of a pill packet when -as we now know – you either gave or attempted to give her more drugs to induce yet another medical crisis. You did this to an already sick child in the very place where others were attempting to make her well and whole again. The word wicked is an old fashioned word but there are times when no other will suffice.

But these instances are not only examples of cruelty and wicked recklessness. The are a very real measure of the quality of the behaviour in which you have been prepared to indulge. Hence, they are to be factored into the risk which you may represent; they are a measure of just how far you will go.

And so I turn to the issue of risk. There is before me a very thorough and thoughtful Report by the Assessor. I have considered it with great care. I do not here analyse it in detail. But there are certain aspects with which I feel bound to deal.

At paragraph 4.1 the Assessor deals with limitations of information. She writes –

‘As Ms Docherty maintains her innocence and she does not have a pattern of previous offending behaviour, it is difficult to determine exactly what drove her to commit the index offence and any conclusions reached cannot be deemed definitive’,

I observe firstly that although there is not a pattern of previous offending in the sense that you have any previous analogous conviction, it is surely self-evident that although this is one charge, it covers a period of almost two years during which there are countless instances of you engaging in precisely the same criminal behaviour; in fact it is a charge which by its very nature is eloquent of a very clear pattern over an extended period of time.

Secondly, and with respect, your motivation is not a mystery; it is absolutely plain. What you did, you did to produce a never ending medical drama and put yourself at the centre of it thus getting the attention which – for want of a better adverb – you so obviously pathologically craved. You were seeking the ‘attention and validation’ which the Assessor spoke of in here evidence.

At various points, the Assessor seems to consider that there is some inherent connection here between the offence and the victim being a child. She considers at some length the fact that if at liberty you would be subject to ‘external control measures as part of child protection measure’ and goes on to conclude that ‘These factors will be key to risk management’.

Again, with great respect, it seems to me there is a fundamental flaw in concluding that children would somehow exclusively or even predominantly  be at risk from you and would be the group around which risk would coalesce. I am of course very conscious that the child suffered dreadfully and was the victim in every sense of the word. Buf if she was the victim she was also the means to the end; and that end was an apparently insatiable for (in the Assessor’s words) attention and validation. There is nothing in the Reports that suggest this feature of your personality is going to be extinguished or mitigated any time soon. And even if you could not avail yourself of a child as a means to this end then it is  reasonable to infer that there is a real risk that you could avail yourself of other means. It has been suggested to me that to proceed on this basis is to speculate. I do not agree. It would be speculation to suggest that you might fix your attention on, for example, a vulnerable elderly neighbour. But it is not speculation to conclude that this is a deeply rooted and central facet of your identity and, as such, a long term and highly dangerous disposition which could all too easily find any number outlets beyond access to children. Some risks are obviously transferable; this is clearly one.

Accordingly, in so far as the assessment of risk here rests upon a nexus with children and is to be significantly alleviated by child protection measures, I cannot agree. I do not share the view that such focus can considered a meaningful or at least a sufficient protective factor.

ORDER FOR LIFELONG RESTRICTION

I have set out my reasons for sentence at unusual length; this is an unusual case and an exceptionally troubling one.

I am satisfied that the criteria set out for an Order for Lifelong Restriction are met and I will accordingly impose one; this will be backdated to 12 December 2025.

In imposing such an order I am required by law to follow a particular procedure and to carry out a particular calculation to reach what is known as the punishment part. This is process which – not unreasonably – is much misunderstood by the public.

I firstly have to consider what determinate sentence I would have imposed if I were not imposing an Order for Lifelong Restriction. That sentence in your case would have been 12 years. I would also have imposed an extended sentence, which essentially would have provided for an extended period of licence upon your eventual release; that would have been 8 years. That extended sentence would have been for the protection of the public. The procedure which I have to follow obliges me to strip away that element since the period for the protection of the public now becomes a matter for the Parole Board.

This leaves the custodial element of 12 years. In order to fix the punishment part, I have to have regard to the early release provisions and so have to deduct 50% from that figure. Thus, the punishment part falls to be calculated at 6 years.

Let me stress what this does NOT mean. It does not mean that you will be automatically released after 6 years. It simply means that that is the earliest date at which you will be able to apply for parole. When you are released – if indeed you will ever be released – will be a matter for the Scottish Parole Board. That is not a matter for me and I cannot say when or what their decision will be. I would however observe that given the very grave nature of your crimes and what I would envisage as substantial hurdles in addressing the risk you pose, you will most likely spend a significant period of years in custody.

What an Order for Lifelong Restriction does mean is that for the rest of your life you will either be in custody or subject to close and rigorous supervision in the community."