The Court of Appeal has rejected A.C.’s appeal against his conviction on 156 counts of indecent assault, ruling that evidence of a complaint made to the complainant’s mother was admissible and that the case was properly left to the jury.
The conviction was entered at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on 22 January 2019. The counts concerned J.K., A.C.’s cousin, and offences alleged to have occurred between 1 January 1982 and 25 August 1996. The Court of Appeal delivered its judgment on 25 February 2020.
The complainant told the trial court that the assaults took place during regular weekend visits to her home. She described incidents in a bedroom and an en-suite toilet and said the conduct began when she was about two or three and stopped when she was six or seven.
The appeal challenged the admission of evidence about what the complainant had told her mother, and the trial judge’s refusal to direct an acquittal at the close of the prosecution case. The complainant’s account was that she told her parents around the time her aunt was making A.C. godfather to a baby girl. Her mother recalled that, when the complainant was about eight, she said her cousin had been touching her and had got into bed with her.
The Court of Appeal held that the earlier account was not positively inconsistent with the fuller evidence later given at trial. It said a complaint need not contain the complainant’s entire account to be admissible. The court also noted that admissibility did not determine the weight the jury should give the complaint.
On the directed-acquittal ground, the appeal court said the trial judge had applied the proper approach: a case should be withdrawn only where the prosecution evidence is so unsatisfactory that no properly directed jury could convict, or proceeding would be unfair. Discrepancies and questions of weight were for the jury to assess, the court said, and there was ample evidence on which a jury could properly convict.
The Court of Appeal rejected both grounds and dismissed the appeal. The judgment addressed the appeal only; it did not set out a new sentence or other order.