The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against the conviction of an anonymised appellant for 60 counts of raping his daughter, finding that the jury was entitled to accept her evidence despite inconsistencies raised by the defence.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Edwards on 17 May 2018, dealt only with the appeal against conviction. The appellant’s appeal against sentence was not addressed. The Court of Appeal said the appellant had been convicted by a jury of counts 5 to 65, while counts 1 to 4 and 66 to 84 had resulted in not-guilty verdicts by direction of the trial judge. The sentences imposed in January 2017 were not under review in this judgment.
At trial, the complainant said the abuse occurred when she was aged 16 and 17, at several addresses in Cork City, and continued on a frequent basis. The appellant denied the allegations and argued that the complainant’s partner had influenced her to make them. The defence also challenged the complainant’s credibility, pointing to differences between her account and evidence about her schooling, family shopping routines, domestic responsibilities and relationship with her partner. The judgment records that the complainant maintained her account of the essential allegations.
The Court of Appeal acknowledged that cross-examination had exposed significant problems in parts of the complainant’s evidence and narrowed the opportunities for some alleged incidents. It said, however, that these matters did not eliminate the possibility that the offences occurred. In the Court’s view, credibility and reliability remained matters for the jury to decide.
The court also noted that the defence had not applied to have the case withdrawn from the jury, either during the prosecution case or after the defence evidence, and had made no significant requests concerning the trial judge’s charge. It said there was no point at which the evidence made it invalid to leave the case to the jury.
The Court of Appeal concluded that the complainant’s evidence remained capable of belief on the essential allegations. Because the jury was entitled to act on that evidence if it accepted it, the verdicts could not be considered perverse. The court held that the trial was satisfactory and the convictions safe, and dismissed the appeal against conviction.