"EVIDENCE DOUBTFUL"

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 198, 22 August 1928, Page 9

"EVIDENCE DOUBTFUL"

YOUNG MEN ACQUITTED. RELATIONS WITH ESCAPED GIRLS. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday. Charges arising from the adventures of two young girls who escaped from the Burwood Girls' Home were heard in the Supreme Court to-day. The accused were seven young men, who were alleged to have had unlawful relations with girls under 16 years of age.

It was alleged that the girls had stayed in several baches with different young men, and that the acts on which the charges were based occurred there. The defence was that the girls did not live in the baches with the men, but came there asking for food.

Frederick James Fox Sullivan, charged with an offence against a girl aged 14, was found not guilty and discharged. Ernest Crozier, who was similarly charged, was also found not guilty. Mr. Justice Adams, in commenting on this verdict, said to the jury: "If it is any satisfaction to you I may say I agree entirely with the verdict in this case. The evidence was very doubtful."

The Crown Prosecutor said with regard to the charges against the other young men, in view of the fact that a girl witness had not been believed, he would consider what he would do about them. Accordingly the charges against Victor- Robert Blackburn, James Hannan, George Quaid, Charles Timothy Rogol and Maurice Victor Rossiter were held over until to-morrow.