MMS Client Acquitted After Sexual Assault Trial

Case study summary

Our client had been accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. We prepared his case by taking detailed instructions on the evidence and instructing experienced legal counsel to represent him during the trial. We were able to persuade the Magistrates to acquit him.

Case study

We represented this client from the beginning of the police investigation. The allegation made was that our client had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl in a supermarket car park by touching her leg with his hand.

Our client explained that this had been a misunderstanding and that he had bumped into the complainant while walking across the car park. This meant that while he accepted having made some physical contact, it was accidental and by no means sexual.

To solidify our client's position, we drafted a prepared statement advancing his defence and ensuring that he would not be criticised in any future trial for not having set out his case early on.

Our client was later charged with the offence and a trial was set at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court. We began preparation by reviewing the key evidence provided in the case, namely CCTV footage from the supermarket car park. The prosecution argued that this footage showed our client following the complainant through the car park. The CCTV did not capture any offence taking place, however, the implication that our client had been intentionally following her was damaging for him.

He explained that he had not been following the complainant and that he had not even noticed the complainant when he had been there. We took instructions on what our client was doing at each point of the CCTV and what he had been thinking at every stage. We carefully prepared these instructions to brief our client's barrister.

We drafted transcripts of all of the recorded evidence in the case and carefully went through these with our client to ensure that he understood the nature of the case against him. These recordings revealed that the complainant had fixated on our client from an early point and that she had in the past jumped to the conclusion that she was being followed by strangers.

Having completed our preparation it was clear that this was a case where the complainant had been on edge and misinterpreted our client innocently bumping into her.

We instructed an experienced barrister to represent our client during the trial and to question the complainant in this case.

Our client gave evidence at his trial and set out his account to the magistrates. His barrister questioned the complainant and set out our client's case that she had misunderstood what had happened.

After deliberating for one hour and thirty-five minutes, the magistrates returned a verdict of not guilty.

Our client was able to walk out of court without the weight of a criminal prosecution hanging over his head and return home to his family. This case had been especially difficult and taken a toll on his mental health in the time between his first arrest and the date of the trial, so he was relieved to be able to put it behind him.