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	England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges) >> AT v MR & Ors [2015] EWFC B1 (09 January 2015) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2015/B1.html Cite as: [2015] EWFC B1

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IN THE FAMILY COURT AT TRURO

		Courts of Justice Edward St Truro
		09/01/2015

1. This is a hearing of AT's application for time with his daughters, JT and NT. JT is 10½ while NT is 8. Both girls live with their mother, MR.
2. The application has been running for a very long time. It was launched in May 2013 as an application for residence and, in the alternative, contact. The parental relationship had broken down in, I think, 2011. At that point these two girls remained with their mother alongside MR's other child, TR. AT is not TR's father. TR is now nearly 16.
3. Contact time was put in place with all three of the children by agreement but, over time, issues arose that curtailed AT's part in the girl's lives. In early 2013 he made it known that he had ambitions to become primary carer to JT and NT. Shortly after that TR made allegations that he had sexually abused her. While the allegations were current, contact with all three of the children was suspended. The police investigated TR's disclosures and were unpersuaded that there was a strong enough evidence base to justify prosecuting AT. They had reached this view quite early on but, by May 2013, contact with JT and NT had not been re-established and this application was initiated specific to those two children.
4. There was some initial delay in locating the children and their mother and the case had its first procedural hearing on 30 July 2013 when District Judge Thomas made the two children parties and appointed a Cafcass Guardian for them.
5. The matter came back before him for directions on 11 September 2013 when he directed statements, disclosure from the police and a one-day hearing. That listing eventually came along on 7 March 2014 but the case was, at that point, transferred to me for what amounted to a fact-finding hearing on TR's allegations. That hearing was held on 19 May 2014.
6. The upshot of that hearing was that MR, who carried the burden of proving on the balance of probability that AT had sexually assaulted TR, failed to discharge that burden. In other words, the sexual abuse was not established. From a legal point of view that left the case to move forward on the premise that AT had not sexually abused TR. The agenda was therefore to look at re-establishing the relationship between him and JT and NT.
7. In late June 2014, Debbie Tully, Guardian for the children, met JT and NT individually at school and during the meeting with JT, the child raised serious allegations of sexual abuse of herself by AT. This led to immediate further police involvement. JT was the subject of medical assessment on 6 August by Dr Roger Jenkins who is a consultant community paediatrician. She had been involved in an achieving best evidence interview on 18 July 2014 during which she made allegations of vaginal rape of herself by AT. I will come back to that interview in a few moments but want to deal first with the medical examination.
8. The history that Dr Jenkins took from JT was that she had been sexually abused by AT from the time when she was about seven until she was about nine. She said that she had not seen him for some 18 months. She said that she had disclosed the abuse to TR. When Dr Jenkins explained that he needed to examine not only her vagina but also her bottom and asked if AT had done anything to her bottom too, JT said that he had.
9. The noteworthy findings on examination were limited. On vaginal examination a wide hymenal orifice was found. The hymenal tissue was thickened between the four o'clock and eight o'clock positions. There were two bumps with associated pale markings at the 6 to 8 o'clock position. JT anus revealed no evidence of anal fissures or healing scars. Nor was there evidence of reflex anal dilatation. There was evidence of circumferential mild venous congestion. Dr Jenkins described these genital and anal findings as not typical. He makes the point that it is important to take account of the appearance of historic genital injuries that have undergone a healing process. Scarring can be minimal. The presence of the bumps detected has been the subject of a certain amount of research and is inconclusive of sexual abuse. The pale areas may represent evidence of healing but Dr Jenkins expressed no great confidence in that. The significance of the wide hymenal orifice was also not something that Dr Jenkins felt able to ascribe positively to sexual abuse or a penetrative injury. The venous congestion around the anus is an abnormal finding but not in any sense indicative of sexual abuse as other causes cannot be excluded.
10. The overall assistance that I derive from Dr Jenkins' evidence can, I think, be fairly put in these propositions: --

a) The genital and anal examination does not establish vaginal or anal penetration.

b) Nor does it exclude either.

c) The aggregation of unusual findings provides some support for JT's allegations whilst no individual finding carries sufficient weight.

11. I next come to JT's own evidence. I have received this through the ABE interview and all parties have both watched that and read its transcript. Nobody has applied for JT to give evidence orally within this hearing. Before I come to what she had to say I want to make a few general points in no particular order.

a) Allegations of sexual abuse are, very often, allegations of events which have occurred behind closed doors without other witnesses present. By their nature, they often lack any or much corroboration. Corroboration is not an essential feature of proving the alleged abuse.

b) Young people can struggle with detail and dates. When they have been victims of traumatic events over a significant period of time it is not an unusual feature for a truthful child to be confused about dates and periods or to give sometimes internally inconsistent evidence.

c) The process of assessing the credibility of such allegations is, specifically, the province of the judge. It involves not only considering what the child says but also her demeanour in saying it.

d) The burden of proof, as in TR's allegations, rests with MR. The standard of proof is the balance of probability – nothing less, nothing more.

e) When assessing evidence derived from an ABE interview, close consideration should be given to the quality of the interview process.

f) When assessing the truth or falsity of such allegations, all of the facts and background are capable of weighing in the balance.

g) The failure of MR to establish TR's allegations is, subject to one or two matters, not relevant to my findings on JT's allegations. Those caveats are as follows: --

i) Absent evidence of a conspiracy, lately joined by JT, to falsely accuse AT, the question-marks that led to TR's account not surmounting the evidential hurdle confronting it make it neither more nor less likely that AT sexually abused JT.

ii) TR was not disbelieved in the sense that I made no positive finding that she had deliberately falsified her account. The failure to prove an account is not the same as a positive finding of falsity. When the failure to prove has the legal consequence that the case proceeds on the premise that TR was not sexually abused, it does not follow that this amounts to a finding against TR of having deliberately falsified her account.

iii) I have anxiously considered the issue of whether JT's allegations ought properly to cause me to reopen the fact-finding in TR's case. My conclusion is that the problems, evidentially, in TR's account remain as they always were and the fact of JT's allegations, whether they face a similar level of evidential difficulty or not, cannot bolster the case that TR was abused. I elect to leave TR's fact-finding where it fell.

12. I move on, therefore, to examine what JT disclosed in interview. I will look at its coherence with other non-interview evidence a little later.
13. I begin by characterising JT. At the date of the interview she had just turned 10 years old. She presented as a bright, engaging 10-year-old. The medical evidence shows her to have been pre-pubertal. I detected no element of the precocious about her. She did not present as mature beyond her years. In no sense could she be described as streetwise. I make those points not to suggest that 10-year-olds cannot be mistaken or do not tell lies but simply to address one possible explanation for a false account. JT does not display guile. She does not present as having the intellectual and emotional wherewithal to either invent and maintain, over time, a complex fiction or to regurgitate such a fiction imposed on her from outside.
14. What did she describe? The interview was quite lengthy and appears to me to have been conducted broadly speaking in an appropriate manner. After establishing that JT had an understanding of the difference between truth and lies the initial part of the interview descended quite quickly to the reasons for her presence in the room. Asked to explain what had happened to her she said that when she was with her dad he used to hurt her with his private area and his hands in between her legs. The interviewing officer went to some trouble to get an amplified explanation from her and was, largely, successful. So far as the timing of any incidents was concerned she said that it happened when she used to see her father. She expressed uncertainty as to when the first occasion had been but thought that she was eight years old. Asked to recollect the first such occasion she described an incident whilst she, her two sisters and her mother and father were living together in address A.
15. On this particular occasion she said that her father and come into her bedroom, ostensibly to read her a bedtime story. She described a bedroom having bunk beds and a single bed and representing the bedroom of herself, NT and TR. She explained that she had the top bunk bed. At the time of the incident she said that TR was out with her friends and NT was brushing her teeth. She said that, in consequence, she was alone in her bedroom with her father. She described herself having sat on his lap in her pyjamas. She went on to explain that he held her by the waist and her back was to his chest. She then went on to describe that he had pushed his penis into her vagina moving it in and out a number of times and that the incident had ended because NT was coming back into the room. That in essence is the substance of the allegation but more detail is then elicited.
16. Unsurprisingly with a girl of JT's age the interviewer took some trouble to establish that she was able to adequately describe the parts of the two bodies concerned. She clearly identified her own vagina which she termed her minnie and she was equally aware that her father's penis was called just that. She described having seen the penis at some stage during the incident and its resemblance to a tube. She gives a description of how he made sexual contact possible by partial undressing of herself and him.
17. It became apparent from JT's answers that she was not describing an isolated incident but was simply describing the first incident she remembered of many. She said that the incidents usually happened in the evening. Asked to describe other such incidents she recollected that there was one time in Address C when he did it to her in the bedroom. She quickly corrected herself saying that he was going through the hallway and picked her up and did it. She then said that on the following day she told her mum that her dad had hurt her with his willy but she did not think that her mother understood what she was talking about.
18. Asked to expand on her description of the incident at Address C she explained that she was washing her hands because she had just been to the toilet. Her father had picked her up as she came out of the toilet and he started doing what he had done to her on the first occasion. She said that she was wearing a dressing gown and underneath it a skirt and a long-sleeved top. She described him picking her up under the armpits and putting her legs around his waist with her front facing his. She described him as having been wearing jeans and having taken his penis out by unbuttoning his fly. She recollects him wearing boxers under his jeans. He introduced it into her vagina and she said that it was not for very long because he did what he had done on the first occasion. Asked to explain what made her father stop on this occasion she said she had asked him "what's that" and he told her "it's none of your business". He then just put her down. She says that she saw his private parts on this occasion as well and they looked the same as on the first occasion. Asked to explain what it felt like when it went into her vagina she said "wet".
19. She went on to explain that this had happened more than once at Address C. She said that that was a home to which she, her sisters and her parents had moved after they lived in Address A. She said that it happened most often while they were still living at Address A. She said that it then occurred nearly every day and it would be in the evening but sometimes in the morning or afternoon. She affirmed that he always did the same thing to her. It normally happened on NT's bed which was the bottom of the two bunk beds or her father would climb up onto her top bunk bed. She confirmed that nobody else would be present. She also said that he would stop when someone would walk in or when she said something to him.
20. Asked to describe another occasion at Address C she explained one when she was in the bathroom and was getting out of the bath. She said that she dried herself and got changed and then her father came into the bathroom and swooped her up. Asked for clarification she said that he picked her up by the waist and kind of like threw her in the air and caught her. She was wearing pyjamas. She said that he took them down and did the same thing to her with his penis. She had been sat down on the toilet lid and her father had been by the bathroom door. He just then swept her up. Again she had her legs around his waist and the incident ended as TR had just got home from her friends and she was going upstairs.
21. Asked where her mother was on such occasions she said that she would be downstairs cooking tea or breakfast and was never in the same room as when it happened.
22. Asked to say whether it had happened in any other rooms at Address C she said that it happened in the kitchen. She said that this occurred when her father was cooking some fried breakfast and he put the bacon on. She entered the kitchen because she was going to get something to eat for a snack after tea and he just picked her up and stuck it in her. She confirmed that it was always the same thing that her father did to her and always involved his private area and her minnie. She added that sometimes he used his hands. She described such occasions as him taking her trousers down and fiddling around with her minnie. She said that in doing that he used different parts of his hands including the palm of his hands and his fingers. He rubbed her minnie with his palm and stuck his fingers up her. She could not remember how many fingers he used to do that. Asked how far his fingers would go inside her minnie she said that it wasn't that far but was far enough to hurt. She said that he would stop if he wanted to do something or if someone walked in or if she showed pain. She said that in general her father didn't speak to her whilst he was touching her.
23. Asked whether she had told anybody about what her father was doing she said that she told her mum once. She repeated what she said earlier in the interview saying that when she was eight she told her mother that her father was hurting her with his willie but that she didn't think her mother understood what she meant. She told TR all about it but was scared to tell anyone else. Asked when she told TR about it she said that it was when her mother and father got divorced and he was staying at the home of someone called AS because he had nowhere to stay and she used to go to see him there.
24. Unsurprisingly this led on to a question as to whether anything that happened in AS's house and she said that it had. She said that TR had her own room there and her father had his own room and she and NT had to share. She described occasions when he would sit her on his lap and just shove his privates into her minnie. NT and TR would normally be downstairs when this happened.
25. Asked whether there were any other locations in which she was abused she said that there was a point when they used to live in a house at Address B and that the same things happened to her there before the parents got divorced. She said that it could happen in the living room, in the bedroom or the bathroom but he wouldn't do it in the kitchen. It would either be in the evening or the morning or the afternoon but usually happened in the evening and would happen almost every day of the week. She accepted that it happened to her lots and lots but said that she was too afraid to tell anyone. She said that her father told her whilst at AS's house that she should not tell anyone. She said that she was scared of him because he used to smack her and her sister and make them watch horror films and shout at them for odd reasons. He said that she was scared that if she told anybody he would smack her.
26. Asked what made her tell TR about it she said that she didn't really know what was going on. She didn't know if it was bad or good so she told her because she kind of helped her through situations as a big sister. When asked why she recently made her disclosure she explained that she had told TR but she started thinking that it was bad because he was using his private area. She said that she is now much older and just thought it might be good to tell somebody else. Asked whether she suffered any injuries as a result of the abuse she said that it used to be red on her minnie and it stung.
27. She said that she told her mother about it in Address C and started telling her mother again and again about what happened and her father hurt her with his willie. She reports her mother as having said that if he was doing what she thought he was doing she was going to stop him from seeing her. She said that the last occasion that she had been penetrated by her father had been at AS's house about 18 months previously. She acknowledged it all stopped at that point and she had not seen her father since because she had told her mother.
28. What I have just recounted represents the broad disclosures made to the police by JT. The locations at which she says that she was abused by her father bear some examination. AT says in his witness statement that for approximately the first six years of JT's life the family lived in Address A. He says that the girl's bedroom there had bunk beds and a cot bed. He asserts that NT slept in the cot bed, TR in the top bunk and JT in the bottom bunk. He says that once NT was no longer a baby she and JT went to bed at the same time and had the same bedtime routine. He said that they would clean their teeth at the same time and together. He accepted he read them bedtime stories but in doing so would either sit by NT's cot or sit by the bottom bunk or on it with his legs on the floor. The girls would be on either side of him.
29. He goes on to say that at about September 2010 when JT was about six the family moved from Address A to Address B. He moved out of that property in June 2011 and believes that MR and the girls continued to live there until February 2013 when they moved to the property at Address C. He says he has never been to the property at Address C.
30. He goes on to say that Address B was a three-bedroomed property where TR had her own bedroom and JT and NT had bunk beds. NT slept on the bottom bunk and JT on the top. He would read stories to them sitting on a bean bag in the bedroom although this became rarer as the girls grew and JT was able to read herself.
31. MR agrees that the family lived at Address A from about August 2004 until August 2010 but says that, while there, TR slept in a single bed and JT and NT had the bunk beds, with JT sleeping in the top one. She agrees with AT that they moved from there to Address B. She also acknowledges that in the middle of 2011 he moved out. She stayed at the property with the children until January 2013. At that property JT would have been aged between six and seven years old during the period when her father was living with them. It is MR's belief that this is the property JT is describing as Address C. She is reinforced in that view by the fact that, in interview, JT gave a description of the bathroom at Address C which coincides with the bathroom at Address B.
32. MR goes on to say that following the separation in mid-2011 AT rented rooms from their mutual friend AS who has a three bedroomed property. She acknowledges that AT had overnight contact with the children at that address. She recalls being told by the children that the applicant father was sharing a room with them.
33. MR and the children moved from Address B and took up residence at Address C from about January or February 2013 after TR made her disclosure of the sexual abuse. Following that disclosure the children have not had any direct contact with AT.
34. We are left with this position that even MR acknowledges that JT cannot be right about her father abusing her at Address C. If she was abused at Address A it must have happened before August 2010 at which date JT was just six years old. In other words, JT's assertion that the abuse began when she was eight must be wrong by a factor of at least two years. If the abuse continued to the next jointly occupied property at Address B and continued there until AT left the property then it could have been ongoing up to the point when JT became seven. If following the parental separation it continued at the home of AS during periods of staying contact then it continued potentially until early 2013 at which point contact stopped.
35. All contact ended in or about January 2013 when TR's disclosures emerged.
36. This area of JT's reliability as to when she was abused, for how long and where is, on any view, an important issue in evaluating her allegations. On the subject of her references to Address C it is plain that she was thinking of a property in which the whole family lived, not one to which AT was simply a visitor. We know she was wrong but it seems at least plausible to contemplate that she mistook this address for Address B even though she appears in interview to recall that address at a later stage of the interview. It also needs to be remembered that we are evaluating the evidence of a 10-year-old who had not seen her father for 18 months and was then being asked to project her memory back well beyond that time.
37. Another issue worthy of thought is the reference in the medical examination to anal abuse. As I read the history taken by Dr Jenkins, this did not amount to a specific allegation of penetration of the anus. No disclosure of such abuse was made in the interview with the police. JT was not asked about it. It would have required a very skilled question to elicit a response to whether anal abuse had occurred. I struggle to speculate what JT would have said if asked this. It is fair to say that she was pretty clear that the abuse took only two forms, one being penile penetration of her vagina and the other digital vaginal penetration. To the extent that the comment to Dr Jenkins can be regarded as an allegation, it is not carried forward, or to be accurate, carried back to the interview.
38. Debbie Tully was the first live witness of the fact-finding. She is the children's Cafcass Guardian and, for the purposes of the hearing was, to a predominant degree, a witness of fact. She was a Guardian relatively new to the case, not having been involved at the stage of investigation of TR's allegations. As at the time of the meetings she had with JT that led to this fact-finding, the case was proceeding not on the premise of sexual risk. She was interested in doing some wishes and feelings work with JT and NT to inform a welfare decision by the court. She held a meeting with both girls together on 21 June 2014 at their school to explain her role, something about the court process and generally prepare them for a later meeting with them individually which, in JT's case, took place on 30 June.
39. At that meeting which took place in the school library, Ms Tully met with JT and was ready to complete some worksheets. Ms Tully was making a written note of what JT had to say and, at an early stage of the meeting whilst Ms Tully was trying to put JT at ease, JT shared that AT caused her fear because he would smack her and shout at her and made her watch horror films.
40. At that point in the meeting Ms Tully checked with JT that she recalled the purpose of the meeting and was ready to embark on the worksheets that she had brought when JT made a serious disclosure. JT announced that she had a most important thing to tell as to why her father should not see her. She went on to say "I don't know how to say this but he hurt me, I can't think of the words, it was at his house, it was usually at bedtime and I was sitting down and reading, I was ready for bed in my pyjamas and everybody else was in a different room. Dad came in and sat next to me and put me on his lap. He'd lift me up, he took the book off me and then he hurt me between my legs with his hands or privates". At that point JT stopped talking and Ms Tully asked her if she had told anyone else about this and she said that she had told only TR.
41. That relatively brief account, according to Mr Tully, took of the order of 20 minutes for JT to come out with, with her struggling, in the view of Ms Tully, for the words to describe what had happened.
42. Immediately thereafter Ms Tully shared the broad nature of the disclosure with the head teacher who was also the school safeguarding officer. A little later she was able to inform MR and she made, first, an oral referral to the local authority and then a written one. I have had the opportunity of seeing the written referral which, in all material respects, is consistent with the evidence of Ms Tully and with what she recorded, the following day, on the Cafcass log.
43. Ms Tully was asked a number of questions as to JT's presentation as she made her disclosure. She correctly offered no view specific to JT's credibility but said that, in her experience, this disclosure did not present as rehearsed. She did not think that JT's language was age inappropriate.
44. The hearing then unfolded further with a viewing of the ABE interview of TR. The reason for this viewing was simply that MR's advocate had not seen it previously and there were some references within it to JT. Frankly, although it was properly viewed, it added little to the picture before me and I am mindful that TR gave an account which, on the balance of the evidence then before me, did not persuade me of its accuracy on the balance of probabilities.
45. The next witness was MR. She was never witness to any sexual abuse and therefore the scope of her evidence was relatively limited. She asserted that the first time that JT shared anything suspicious of sexual abuse was a time when she and the children were living at Address C after contact between AT and the children had ended. She said that JT had been very quiet for a couple of weeks and MR had kept asking her what was wrong. Eventually, in the front room of the home, MR asked again and JT said that her father was hurting her with his willy. She seemed upset on saying this and then went to her room.
46. MR told me that she shared what JT had said with Mary Stimson, the first Cafcass Guardian. She also said that when the police came to investigate TR's disclosure, they spoke to JT on two occasions. We know that at that time JT made no sexual disclosures.
47. I have already dealt with the level of agreed evidence about properties at which the parties lived from time to time. MR additionally accepted that the toilet at Address B was separate from the bathroom.
48. MR was challenged directly in cross-examination that she had coached JT in a false set of allegations. She vehemently denied that.
49. AT then gave evidence. As was the case when TR made her allegations, his case lay in simple denial. He was swift to point out the clear errors in JT's account. He expressed the view that either MR or TR or a combination of both had coached JT.
50. In terms of motive he pointed out that no allegations were made until he expressed interest in mediation about primary care of the girls and he believes that MR wants to keep him out of her life. He thought that JT had gone along with the false story to keep the peace with her mother.
51. On some matters of detail he offered challenge to JT's account. He challenged her account of the sleeping arrangements at Address A. He also said that JT and NT would almost invariably clean their teeth at bedtime together and that he would ordinarily supervise NT doing that, making it very improbable that he would have had opportunity to abuse JT in the way she says first happened.
52. There the matter is. On this evidence base I have to determine whether MR establishes JT's allegations. Let me make some general points that represent building blocks to my conclusions: -

a) There is no positive evidence of a conspiracy to frame AT. It is his assertion but it is one unsupported by specific evidence.

b) On any view, JT was inaccurate in a number of respects. Her inaccuracy needs to be viewed in the context of her age and the period over which any abuse that is established will have occurred. Aged 10 and looking back to describe things that happened to her at least 18 months in the past, getting the detail of her own age correct at the time of abuse is not to be expected. In interview, in any event, this type of detail was not something that she expressed with great certainty. Equally, for a child of her age it is unsurprising that she muddles properties at which the family lived a significant time (for her) in the past.

c) The conspiracy theory needs a number of components. It needs: -

i) A motive

ii) Someone with the ability and resolve to coach JT

iii) In JT, a child capable of being coached and capable of carrying through a pretence in front of a police officer, a social worker and a Cafcass officer.

d) The motive that AT suggests of a desire in MR to eliminate him from her life is, whilst not impossible, unlikely. I say this because there had been a consensual contact relationship enduring for some time after the breakdown of the parties' marriage and there seems no obvious explanation for a vindictive campaign of this type at this particular stage, even allowing for his ambitions for care of the children.

e) The two candidates to coach JT, either individually or together, are MR and TR. MR is someone whom I have observed giving evidence on two occasions. Whilst she was unimpressive as a witness in TR's fact-finding hearing, she has presented in both hearings with a fragility and quite a high level of need. She does not appear to me to have the strength of character and intellectual capacity to coach a child to a quite complex false account. As for TR, I am extremely doubtful that she has the degree of sophistication that would be needed to conceive and implement a plan of this nature.

f) I move on to consider JT. JT's school report and her presentation in the ABE interview show her to be a bright girl. I have already characterised her as lacking in guile and as not being mature beyond her years or streetwise. She certainly lacks the sophistication to concoct a plot of this nature herself and I am in no doubt that she would be unable to learn, retain and deliver, under pressure, as complex an account as she in fact delivered, if it were a concoction.

g) To look at the matter from a different perspective, I ask myself what JT or her mother or older sister would invent as a fiction to frame AT if that were their aim. It certainly might be an allegation of rape but it would be wholly unnecessary and indeed self-defeating to endow the story with anywhere near the degree of detail that JT gave.

h) Moreover, one would be astute to at least achieve accuracy of verifiable detail in what one did say. Instead, in this case, JT gets her account demonstrably wrong in a number of respects and provides details that go far beyond what was necessary.

i) The conspiracy theory, for all these reasons, does not run.

j) AT presented much as he did in TR's fact-finding hearing. He was quiet, calm and exhibited apparent sincerity. He is in a difficult situation without a positive case to put forward but his defence is easy enough to state. He did that as one might have expected. He could not offer a convincing argument as to why JT would have lied about him.

k) My task is to view all of the evidence in the round and reach conclusions. MR was in TR's fact-finding, an unsatisfactory witness. I continue to have doubts about her evidence in JT's case where that evidence descends to the issue of when she had knowledge of concerns by JT. However that does not lead me on to view her as having the capacity to carry into effect quite a sinister and complicated plan to incriminate AT. It is entirely possible that JT is being substantially truthful and accurate in her ABE interview while her own mother is less than reliable as to her own knowledge of events. At the end of the hearing I received skilful and comprehensive submissions from all of the advocates. Having considered them, I am entirely satisfied that the core of JT's account in interview is true. Her account in interview was, in my judgement, compelling. This remains so despite her errors of detail. I acknowledge that caution is needed over its detail in terms of time, place and frequency. With that in mind, I find on the balance of probability: -

i) That AT penetrated his daughter JT's vagina with his penis on a number of occasions.

ii) It happened first when she was either under six years or within a few weeks after her sixth birthday.

iii) It continued during the period from her attaining six years through to the time when she was eight.

iv) That on a number of occasions, AT put his finger or fingers inside JT's vagina without excuse.

53. I will hear brief argument on the implications for the case generally of these findings.

HH Judge Vincent