Man Accused of Child Sexual Offence - Case Dropped

Case study summary

Our client was a young man accused of a historic rape of a young child. This was a sensitive case as our client was a youth at the time of the alleged rape. We carefully controlled the police investigation. Ultimately, the police had no choice but to drop the case.

Case study

Our client was a young man who had never been subjected to a police investigation before. He was a hardworking man; he was supporting his wife who was expecting their first child.

A family friend's child had alleged that she had been raped by him when she was aged under 12 years old. At this time, our client would only have been a teenager himself. The client recognised the seriousness of the situation and contacted our specialist sexual offence lawyers. There was a concern about social services becoming involved with the family and the impact this could have on his career.

We took over the case, carefully managing all contact with the police and representing the client in his interview. We assessed the evidence against him and it was clear the child's version of events was highly inconsistent, not plausible and unreliable. We took instructions from the client to understand why this false allegation had been made.

During the interview, we put forward a prepared statement that emphasised our client had not committed this offence whilst carefully controlling the amount of information we allowed the police to have. This made it clear to the police that their case was weak and the matter needed to be dropped. We pressured the police officer dealing with the case to resolve this quickly, we felt it should not even go to the CPS to avoid a further delay.

We managed to get this case resolved quickly, allowing the client to get back to spending time with his new family. His family had been supporting him throughout the case and were relieved that the right result had been achieved.