A conviction for rape was not unsafe on the basis that the judge should have permitted cross-examination of the victim about the falsity of previous allegations of sexual abuse by other men. The fact that the victim had made but not pursued those allegations did not provide a proper evidential basis for showing the falsity […]
A medical expert’s opinion that a 15-year-old girl’s injury to her hymen was diagnostic of blunt force trauma from sexual penetration had not been materially inaccurate and had not misled the jury in the trial of the appellant for raping the girl.
In the circumstances, the fact that a complainant had made an unfounded allegation of rape against an accused in a retrial did not cast doubt on the reliability of her evidence against him in an earlier trial so as to render unsafe his conviction for sexual assault in that earlier trial.
The judge had been wrong to direct the acquittal of two of the four defendants in a case involving an allegation of the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl; evidence of collusion between the complainant and a witness might be used to cast doubt on their reliability and truthfulness but it should not have been […]
