The Court of Appeal has rejected Henry Wooldridge’s appeal against convictions for sexual offences involving three sisters who were minors at the time of the alleged offences. The court upheld the convictions and did not revisit the separate sentence appeal, which had been withdrawn.
Wooldridge was convicted after a nine-day trial before a judge and jury in February 2017. The convictions included one rape of A.F., sexual assaults of A.F., N.F. and B.F., and a sexual assault verdict on a count where the jury found him not guilty of rape. The court said the offences spanned January 2009 to August 2010, while the charges overall covered a period to August 2011. A ten-year sentence was imposed for rape, with the other sentences concurrent.
The appeal focused mainly on whether the trial judge should have warned the jury about convicting on uncorroborated evidence in relation to more of the charges. The defence argued that the warning concerned only B.F.’s two rape allegations, and could have led the jury to treat the other complainants’ evidence with less caution. It also cited the absence of eyewitnesses, physical evidence or admissions, and raised concerns about delays and changes in the complainants’ accounts.
The prosecution argued that the trial judge had discretion over whether to give a warning and that the warning given was clear. It said the judge had explained corroboration and told the jury there was no independent evidence supporting the complainants’ accounts. The warning was limited to B.F.’s two rape allegations because she first reported those allegations in May 2016, years after her initial statement to gardaí in November 2010.
The Court of Appeal said a trial judge’s decision on a corroboration warning should not be disturbed unless it was based on an incorrect legal basis or was clearly wrong on the facts. It found the judge had explained that the warning arose from the delay in reporting B.F.’s rape allegations, and that no similar delay applied to the other charges. The court rejected the argument that giving a warning for one complainant generally required one for another.
The appeal against conviction was dismissed. The court did not determine the separate grounds as independent issues: they had been subsumed under the main ground and that was how the appeal was argued.