Women’s groups have called for a further overhaul of the law after the court of appeal declined to increase the sentence of a man jailed for less than five years after choking a woman to death during sex. Sam Pybus’s wife described the decision as “extremely disappointing” and “victim-blaming”. Pybus admitted the manslaughter of Sophie Moss after he applied “prolonged” pressure to her neck at her home in Darlington in the early hours of 7 February. The 32-year-old told police that Moss would encourage him to strangle her during sex, Teesside crown court heard. The sentencing judge accepted that the defendant did not intend to kill the 33-year-old and his remorse was genuine, and gave him a sentence of four years and eight months in prison. At the court of appeal on Friday, three judges rejected an attempt by the attorney general, Suella Braverman, to increase Pybus’s sentence. Lady Justice Macur, sitting with Lady Justice Carr and Mr Justice Murray, said: “Bearing all the circumstances of this case in mind, we are not persuaded that the judge was wrong in categorisation, was wrong in the uplift he applied … or was wrong in the element of discount that he gave for mitigation and then for his plea of guilty.” Pybus’s estranged wife, Louise Howitt, who was sleeping upstairs in their bedroom when he sneaked out to meet Moss for sex, had supported the request for a harsher sentence. After the hearing on Friday, she said: “It is extremely disappointing. It doesn’t reflect the lifetime of grief that he has inflicted on Sophie’s family. It sends out a really clear message to men and women that the rough sex defence is valid and works, even though the Domestic Abuse Act was supposed to abolish it. “I think it was a very lenient sentence and it places the responsibility on Sophie, which to me is victim-blaming and that should not be allowed to happen.” Fiona Mackenzie, of the campaign group We Can’t Consent to This (WCCTT), said: “We were horrified to see the court accept Pybus’s claim that Sophie had consented, and was a willing participant, in what Lady Macur called a ‘risky sexual practice’, despite this never being tested in court, and despite this being strongly refuted by Sophie’s former long-term partner and by Sam Pybus’s ex-wife.” Along with the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ), WCCTT tried to intervene in the appeal, said Mackenzie, “providing evidence that strangulation is a core part of domestic and sexual abuse and that claims of ‘consent’ to strangulation were too easily being accepted by courts in giving lighter sentences and lesser charges. This was rejected by Lady Macur who agreed with Pybus’s defence team that Sophie’s strangulation was consensual and so our evidence did not apply. “This could not be a clearer case to show that the law (what it says and how it works) must change. Sophie Moss deserves better, and parliament must return to this.” Harriet Wistrich, the director of the CWJ, said: “We believe in addition to reviewing the law there needs to be a change in approach to the prosecution of such cases so that a proper review of surrounding all evidence is taken into account before conceding the defendant’s account. This case also demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the nature of domestic abuse and of violent male offending.” Last July the home secretary, Priti Patel, tweeted: “We have published a clause to end so-called ‘rough sex defence’ which enables perpetrators to avoid justice by claiming their victims consented to rough sex.” But lawyers argue it was never a true defence and that all that really happened was that guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service was updated to reiterate that “a person is unable to consent to the infliction of harm that results in ABH [actual bodily harm] or other more serious injury, for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification … Thus, a defendant will be unable to rely on a victim’s consent to the infliction of such harm as part of any so-called ‘rough sex’ defence, and will remain liable to prosecution for ABH or GBH [grievous bodily harm].”