Client Acquitted of Serious Sexual Assault

Case study summary

Our client was charged with a number of offences, including assault by penetration, criminal damage and breaching a non-molestation order. He accepted some of the offences but denied the sexual assaults. We fought the case and he was found not guilty of the sexual offences.

Case study

We were approached by a client who had been accused of a number of offences by his wife. The relationship between them had broken down and things had become very tense towards the end. His wife initially phoned the police one evening after an argument and alleged that he had broken her some of her personal items.

After starting to prepare family court proceedings, she then made further allegations that our client had seriously sexually assaulted her twice during the relationship. She went on to obtain a non-molestation order in the family courts.

Our client accepts that after suffering a mental health breakdown, he went to her address, in breach of the non-molestation order, and damaged her car.

This was a difficultly case as our client accepted that he was guilty of some offences but not others. The prosecution had successfully applied for the jury to be made aware of the offences he had pleaded guilty to. This risk was that this could taint the juries view of our client. We therefore had to make sure that the case was prepared as thoroughly as possible and that we had a complete history of the relationship from our client.

Further, we obtained and meticulously reviewed the complainants medical records and records of all conversations with police officers. These made it clear that, whilst she had been making some of the allegations since the start of the case, she only mentioned the sexual allegations around the point she started family court proceedings. Our clients view was that she had made the sexual allegations to increase her chances of achieving her aims in the family court.

We instructed a specialist sexual offences barrister who was able to sensitively set out the timeline in the case to the jury.

We successfully convinced the jury that they even though our client had committed other offences, that did not mean he had committed the sexual offences. They unanimously acquitted him of all sexual allegations.

Our client was released at the end of the case as he had served his sentence for the smaller offences whilst awaiting trial. He is now returning to work and starting to rebuild his life.