"PROMPTED BY SOMEBODY.'

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 141, 16 June 1928, Page 11

"PROMPTED BY SOMEBODY.'

LITTLE EVIDENCE

CHARGE AGAINST MAN FAILS. | ■ I'y Telegraph— Own Correspondent.) HAMILTON, this day. "It would be a most dangerous thing to convict prisoner on the uncorroborated e\ idcnee of a girl of eight years of age purporting to relate to an" offence which she said occurred when she was five and a half years old," liis Honor, Mr. Justice Blair, warned a jury at Hamilton yesterday, in a case in which a middle-a«*ed man named Jeremiah O'Connell, farmer, of Kopahi, near Te Kuiti, was charged with indecently assaulting a little eirl. Mr. H. T. GilliSs, Crown Solicitor, in opening the case, told the jury that if they should at any stage of the proceedings feel that the evidence did not warrant the case proceeding, thev were entitled to throw it out.

The little girl gave her evidence in clear, precise tones, and was quite definite regarding an incident which she said occurred in the bathroom at her father's bouse, while O'Connell was still living with them. The offence, she said, mostly occurred in the bedroom in which her father and O'Connell both slept.

The father of the child and his two sisters, who did not hear the child s evidence, all stated that the bathroom was not built until at least tT \ el y e months after O'Connell had ceas live at the house. . Hi. Honor b' e <Suld evidence had to te „ the j?ry tha?Tt would be to conSct He expressed the opinion that the o ri'a evidence must be the outcome of fma-ination. Some person, possibly -fr" „ r .idße against the prisoner, had probably P »t ber up to the story. It "L me d to his Honor inconceivable that this little girl could describe the alleged incidents as she did without prompting from somebody.

The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, and prisoner wa- discharged. * Prisoner was represented by Mr. Vernon, of Te Kuiti.