SUFFICIENCY OF EVIDENCE

The Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service had not erred in making a decision not to prosecute an alleged rape of a 14-year-old boy with moderate learning difficulties; there was a clear factual basis for the finding that there were insufficient grounds to mount a prosecution.

A taxi driver’s conviction for a single offence of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old passenger was not unsafe where the driver had been suffering from undiagnosed diabetes at the time of his police interview and, unbeknown to all, might have been hypoglycaemic. On the facts, the driver’s answers in police interview could not be regarded as having made any difference to the jury being satisfied that the girl was telling the truth.

A judge’s refusal to hold a fact-finding hearing to clarify whether a father, who had been allowed unsupervised contact with his children, had committed indecent assault many years earlier could not be criticised.

The Appeal Division of the Isle of Man had been entitled to conclude that an autistic man’s conviction for sexual assault was safe. The expert evidence adduced by the offender about his condition did not lead to a different conclusion because the evidence, as a whole, supported conviction.

A judge had not erred in law in rejecting an offender’s submission of no case to answer to four counts of rape and two counts of sexual assault, all of a child aged under 13, in circumstances where, despite inconsistencies in the victim’s evidence, through the victim’s various accounts the judge had a clear basis on which to form his conclusion that, applying the principles established in R. v Galbraith (George Charles) [1981] 1 W.L.R. 1039, it was for the jury and not for him to assess the victim’s credibility.