Our Client Not Guilty of Sexually Assaulting Neighbour

Case study summary

A neigbour's daughter accused our client of touching her chest, which he strongly denied. He came to us in order to ensure he had the best defence. We spent dozens of hours looking for the holes in the alleged victim's story, and we were able to prove our client's innocence.

Case study

Our client faced trial at Manchester Crown Court after being accused of sexually assaulting his neighbour's daughter. On the day in question, he had attended his ex-wife's house to visit his children. When he arrived, he found that she was having a small gathering with some friends, including their next-door neighbour. The group were drinking alcohol and invited our client to stay and join them. While they were drinking, the neighbour had been talking about how her daughter had been out the night before and not returned until the early hours of the morning.

After a while, the group ran out of ice for their drinks and our client offered to go to the neighbour's house and get some. He also asked the mother if she would like him to speak with the daughter about what she had done the night before. He had known her since she was a child and felt that she would listen to what he had to say.

When he entered the house, he could hear the daughter upstairs. He shouted to her to let her know he was in the house and was coming to speak with her. The daughter was in her room with her friend. They had a brief conversation and our client told her that she should be more respectful to her mother.

He left the room, got the ice, and went back to his ex-wife's house. However, this was not the girl's version of events. She stated that when he came up to her room, he had started talking about scars he had on his body and had touched her body in the places where his scars were located, including her chest. The police were called later that night after the daughter told her mother what apparently happened. Initially he had no solicitor. He later told us that he had felt he didn't need one. He thought that if he just told the police the truth they would realise straight away and that would be the end of it.

Sadly, he was charged with Sexual Assault. At that point he had realised that he needed experts to fight his corner, and he instructed our specialist sexual offence solicitors to fight his case. He had never been accused of anything like this and was terrified of the possible outcome. He was working as a chef at the time and worried that he would lose his job too.

Once we got hold of the evidence, we discovered that the initial account provided by the daughter was inconsistent with what she had told the police. We went through hundreds of pages of the prosecution's 'unused evidence' in order to find the arresting officer's logbook of the events which confirmed the differing accounts.

At trial, our hand-selected barrister was able to cross-examine the daughter as to why she had provided different accounts. Of course, she was utterly unable to explain the differences. It was clear that she was childishly angry at our client for telling her off about the night before and had made this allegation up to get back at him. We took every single opportunity to ensure that this was made clear at trial.

The jury felt they had no choice but to find our client Not Guilty by a unanimous verdict.