At the end of last week the Court of Appeal explained why it had upheld the conviction of a grandfather – who can be identified only as ‘SB’ – for sexually abusing his granddaughter, even though that same granddaughter told the court, under oath, that he is innocent.
The granddaughter, identified in the judgment as ‘M’, was 13 when she told her mother and then her counsellor that SB had sexually assaulted her when she was 3 to 9 years old. The counsellor reported this to the police, and M repeated the allegations on video, and again under cross-examination in the Crown court. There was no corroboration of her allegations but eleven out of the twelve jurors were sure she was telling the truth. He was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
The grounds of his appeal were very simple: shortly after the trial M admitted that she had lied. Her grandfather had not abused her.
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