Court of Appeal Jails Abuser After Attorney General Reeves Steps In

The Court of Appeal has sent a Bristol man to prison after the new Attorney General argued that letting him walk away from a suspended sentence was unduly lenient. Aiden Ford, 40, of Hanham, had been given three years, suspended for three years, at Cardiff Crown Court on 11 June. On 20 October the Court of Appeal replaced that with four years and three months, to be served immediately.

The referral was made by Ellie Reeves KC MP under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme. Reeves was sworn in as Attorney General on 1 October. This is an early public use of the power, and she has framed it as a test of her stated priority: violence against women and girls.

What the court was sentencing

Ford was convicted of controlling and coercive behaviour, suffocation, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and perverting the course of justice. The Attorney General's Office said he and the victim began a relationship in September 2024, and that between February and August 2025 he carried out repeated violent assaults and coercive control. That included trapping her, threatening her life, and continuing to contact her after she tried to end the relationship. On one occasion, the office said, he forced her into a car, drove to a secluded place, restrained her and suffocated her with his forearm. She feared for her life. After she reported the abuse, he pressured her until she withdrew her statements to police.

The original judge in Cardiff treated a suspended sentence as sufficient. The Court of Appeal did not. Unduly lenient referrals are not a retrial. They ask whether a sentence fell outside the range a reasonable judge could pass. Reeves decided this one had, and the court agreed, adding both custody and time.

"No place for domestic abuse"

Reeves said tackling violence against women and girls is her first priority, and that she welcomed the decision to overturn the suspended sentence after her referral. For a law officer three weeks into the job, the case is a signal to Crown Prosecution Service lawyers and to sentencing judges: suspensions in this territory will be read in her office, not only in the local court.

The scheme is limited. Anyone can ask the Attorney General to look at a sentence, but only the law officers can refer it, and only within 28 days of the original sentence. The Court of Appeal can increase a sentence. It cannot invent new facts. What it can do, as it did here, is say that mercy which leaves a victim's account of a campaign of violence without immediate custody was not mercy the guidelines allowed.

Anyone in immediate danger should call 999. The free National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247. For the other appeal dominating the legal pages this month, the Court of Appeal's ruling on BHP and the Mariana dam is a different use of the same building: a civil liability fight, not a sentence. The black-cab case against Uber, decided last week, turned on time limits rather than on whether a punishment was long enough.