MEDICAL EVIDENCE

The conviction of a vulnerable adult with a severe learning disability for the offence of sexual activity by a care worker with a person with a mental disability was unsafe, and was accordingly quashed, where inadequate consideration had been given to his learning disability in the course of the trial. Fresh psychological evidence demonstrated that he would have had difficulty in dealing with leading questions asked in cross-examination, and that might have left the jury with a false impression.

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 by another and the jury had decided on the non-medical evidence.

Developments in medical knowledge that reduced the diagnostic significance of physical signs of abuse in children did not render a conviction prior to the change in approach unsafe.

Fresh evidence which cast doubt on the credibility of a complainant’s evidence had sufficient impact on the safety of a conviction for rape for it to be quashed. However, the evidence did not have the same impact on the complainant’s credibility in respect of allegations of sexual assault, which were upheld.

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.

A conviction for offences of rape and indecent assault of a child was safe despite fresh evidence that questioned the basis for the expert medical evidence at trial, as it did not undermine the evidence and credibility of the victim.

Section 58 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 did not have retrospective effect; therefore licence periods could not extended under that provision for offences which occurred before 30 September 1998.