There was no general principle that delay, in a criminal trial involving young children, meant that the evidence of that child should always be excluded at a subsequent trial; each case was fact specific. In the instant case, a judge had been entitled to admit a child’s Achieving Best Evidence interview at trial despite the […]
The court considered issues relating to the impact of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.28 and the pre-recorded cross-examination of vulnerable child witnesses, and provided guidance regarding best practice for trial judges and advocates.
It was best practice for a judge to direct a jury before the cross-examination of a vulnerable witness that limitations had been placed on the defence counsel and to explain after the cross-examination the type of issues which the defendant would have wished to explore in further detail. Such directions should be repeated in the […]
A claimant failed to show that disclosure on enhanced criminal record certificates of an allegation of sexual assault of which he had been acquitted was disproportionate and inaccurate.
The court allowed Romania’s appeal against the grant of bail to a requested person who had been convicted and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for sexual offences against an 11-year-old girl whilst working as her dance teacher. The court was satisfied that there were substantial grounds to believe that the requested person would fail to […]
At a fact-finding hearing relating to the death and possible sexual assault of a child, the court highlighted difficulties with the approach to police disclosure outlined in the 2013 Protocol and Good Practice Model and made detailed suggestions for new procedural guidelines, subject to formal review by the President of the Family Division.
A conviction for sexual offences against a child was safe, as medical evidence adduced as fresh had not permitted confident review of a previous diagnosis so as to describe it as ill-founded; taken at its highest it neither supported nor refuted the allegations against the offender. The defence was still that any abuse was perpetrated […]
An offender who had been incorrectly convicted of indecent assault instead of gross indecency with a child had his appeal against conviction allowed and his sentence reduced to six years’ imprisonment.
A decision to prosecute a 10-year-old boy for sexual offences committed against a younger boy was not irrational, nor had there been a failure by the CPS to follow its settled policy on the prosecution of young offenders.
A suspended sentence for seven offences of indecent assault on step-siblings of a very young age, carried out over a protracted period some 20 years earlier, had not been unduly lenient. The interruption to the offender’s treatment programme that an immediate custodial sentence would cause, and the potential resulting exacerbation of the situation, amounted to […]
