This long running matter involved a client who came to us charged with 7 serious sexual offences. The charges were strictly indictable and the client was facing a long wait to trial and a difficult defence in front of a jury. The allegation occurred in a country town and the charges commenced in a regional Magistrates Court location.

We progressed the matter and obtained all of the disclosure evidence. On review, it was apparent the prosecution case was very weak. The complainant’s account was inconsistent with other evidence, and a lot of it made little sense. There was also evidence of a clear motive to lie, as well as various other evidentiary issues including that the forensic evidence did not match the complainant’s account.

The matter progressed to a trial listing hearing in a regional District Court registry. Given the issues with having the matter heard by a regional jury, including the risk of jurors knowing the client, we were successful in having the case transferred to the Perth District Court. This not only ensured a fair trial for the client, but also reduced the cost of legal fees substantially as we were not required to travel to the regional location for a fairly lengthy trial.

We obtained via summons to WA Police, numerous documents relevant to the complainant’s credibility. This included numerous incident reports of prior criminal behaviour by the complainant, as well as various other allegations of sexual assault that had been made. This put us on notice that the complainant may well have made previous false complaints of sexual assault. We made an application for disclosure of ‘protected communications’ relevant to this issue, which was opposed by the State. Following the filing of detailed submissions, and expansive oral argument by James Jackson, we were successful in obtaining disclosure of the protected communications. These matters indicated, as anticipated, that the complainant had made a prior false allegation of sexual assault. This type of evidence is almost unheard of in a sexual assault case and substantially increased the strength of the defence case.

After obtaining this critical evidence the defence case was very strong. However, the State progressed the matter to a pre-recording of the complainant’s evidence, and the trial remained listed. A short period prior to the pre-recording, the State prosecutor indicated all charges would be dropped against the client.

This fantastic outcome meant that the client’s name was finally cleared after over a year of legal proceedings which were pursued by the State based upon weak and arguably false evidence. The client was very happy with this result and thanked the firm for its efforts.