Verdict expected on "tactile" teen's alleged indecent assaults

Friday 25 January 2019

The trial of a young man charged with two separate counts of indecent assault has come to a close in Guernsey's Royal Court but a verdict isn't expected until Monday.

The Judge and Jurats heard arguments throughout this week from both the prosecution and defence lawyers, and now have to decide whether the defendant is guilty of one assault, and how extreme a second assault he's already admitted was.

While the man has pleaded guilty to one of the two charges, the prosecution and defence advocates don't agree on how extreme it was. He denied the second count happened at all. 

Over the course of this week, the court has heard from a number of witnesses who gave their accounts of what happened on two dates in the Summer of 2017. This is when the defendant allegedly indecently assaulted two teenage girls.

Every witness to take the stand, including the young man himself, told the court how he was a "tactile" person, who likes to push boundaries. He was well known by his friends for grabbing private parts of other people - both male and female - and also for being a sexual person. But this was always done in a "jokey" manner, he said. Despite this, Prosecuting Advocate Fiona Russell told the court in her closing statements that this behaviour was of a "classic sexual predator", along with the way he was allegedly "manipulative" of the girls.  

One of the incidents happened at a mutual friend's house when that person was not in the room. The defendant allegedly placed his hand on the girl's crotch both over and under her trousers, but he says he had her consent the entire time. She, however, denies that was the case, although did tell the court in evidence that she did not ask the defendant to stop as the assault was taking place. Legally, she could not provide her consent anyway, and so a guilty plea was entered. The two parties both agreed they had kissed each other earlier in the evening.

The second incident happened the same summer, but with a different teenage girl. The defendant and the alleged victim were at the bus terminus talking, while he was drunk and she was waiting for a bus. The girl was opening up to the defendant - one of her "best friends" - about a struggling relationship. But during that conversation she said he had tried, and failed, to put his hand down her trousers, and also rubbed her crotch over her trousers. She moved bench while the defendant vomited, and then got on a bus. 

But the defence's version of events say this had never happened, with the closest part of reality being that he had put his hand on her thigh to comfort her. In his closing statements, Advocate Liam Roffey picked apart all of the witness statements and concluded to Judge Russell Finch and the Jurats that his client's account of events far more closely matched the evidence the court had been provided. 

He also said there were inconsistencies in how the alleged victims said they had acted, compared to text messages, and how the events had unfolded in other people's eyes. When it came to the second incident, he asked the court why, if the girl had been indecently assaulted, did she continue to visit the defendant when he was in custody and make phone calls to him. 

The court will now take until Monday to come to a verdict of either guilty or not guilty for the second count, and also a decision on the severity of the first count of assault, as that is still disputed. 

More to come when a verdict is delivered on Monday morning...