Page 445 - Magistrates Conference 2019

Page 37

confronted the appellant about the allegation, and he admitted that he had asked C for sex when she was 14 years old.

172. On 13 January 2011 C visited her aunt. She told her that the appellant had been coming into her bedroom at
night. On 26 January 2011 the aunt reported to the police that the appellant had been sexually abusing C since she was
10 years old. C gave a detailed account in an interview with the police the following morning.

173. The appellant was tried by His Honour Judge Bartfield and a jury at the Crown Court in Bradford in June-July
2012. At the trial, the prosecution case was that, when C was between 10 and 16 years of age, the appellant had entered
her bedroom at night on hundreds of occasions, stood in front of her, and masturbated himself.

174. The defence case was that the allegations were fabricated. Even though the appellant had asked C for sex on one
occasion, he could not remember why he had done this, and he maintained that this had not disturbed their relationship.
He thought C may have been motivated to make the allegations in order to secure a financial interest in a property
which he owned.

175. At the time of the trial, the appellant had 15 previous convictions relating to 44 offences. Among these were 26
theft offences (including burglary and robbery) and 4 fraud offences. The most recent conviction was in 1991, when the
appellant was 25. In addition, the appellant had received a caution in 2002 for the possession of cannabis resin. There
were no previous convictions for sexual offences.

176. The defence adduced the appellant's previous convictions to establish that he had no record of convictions for
sexual offences.

177. There was a discussion prior to the summing-up as to the appropriate direction as to character. The judge said
that, because of the previous convictions, positive good character did not apply, "other than to say, as it were, the
negative. My intention is to direct the jury that these things do not take the matter any further one way or the other."
Experienced counsel who then appeared for the appellant agreed with that approach, emphasising that he had no
offences recorded against him of a sexual nature.

178. In addition, there was a discussion about the admission made by the appellant that he had asked the complainant
for sex. The appellant's counsel said that she would be inviting the jury to consider, if the appellant had never made that
admission, whether they would find the evidence good enough to convict him of the sexual offences. The judge agreed
that she was entitled to take that course.

179. The judge directed the jury in the following terms in relation to propensity:

"You know that this defendant has a number of previous convictions for crimes of dishonesty but they are many years
ago now and in the context of a troubled boyhood. I would be wholly wrong for you, in any way, to hold against him
the fact that he has a list of previous convictions when he was a very young man and those criminal convictions are to
play no part in your decision. The defence put them before you so as to demonstrate - and this is right- that he has no
convictions for sexual matters. Obviously, if he was somebody who had a long record for convictions against young
girls then that is something you would be entitled to take into account. But that is not the position here. And so his
previous convictions play, as I have said, no part in your decision making in this case."