SUPREME COURT Verdict Of Guilty On Indecency Charges

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32011, 11 June 1969, Page 11

SUPREME COURT Verdict Of Guilty On Indecency Charges

A 63-year-old man was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court yesterday on six charges of indecency involving a girl under 12—three of indecently assaulting her and three of permitting her to do an indecent act on him. The man—whose name has been suppressed by Mr Justice Wilson until further order of the Court—was remanded for sentence on June 17.

He had pleaded not guilty on all counts and was defended by Mr E. F. B. Powell. The jury, which included two women, was one hour in reaching its verdict The man was charged with having committed the in decencies, on September 20, October 10, and October 24 last, in a shed on his pro perty, to which the complain ant said she had been taken by another girl, aged 13. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr N. W. Williamson) submitted to the jury that the evidence against the accused was quite clear, and “irresistibly strong." The jury, he sug gested, would have no difficulty whatever in relying on the girl complainant “If you were to accept what the accused says, you would have to conclude that she and two other girls, and two detectives, have all deliberately misled you,” Mr Williamson told the jury. Mr Powell, in his address for the defence, submitted that the accused had given acceptable explanations in his evidence, and that the Crown had failed completely to prove his guilt beyond » reasonable doubt

His Honour, in the course of summing up, said that the accused’s defence was, and always had been, that the complainant's story was “a pack of lies.” “If this is so, it means that these girls have put their heads together, and that one girl has been coached by the other, and that they have deliberately given their evidence against him," his

Honour said. “Do you think that is possible? Particularly, do you think it possible as regards one girl’s mentality? Is she capable of anything so complicated and subtle?”