Anatomy Of A Trial For Child Exploitation

BACKGROUND

N is a Slovak girl aged 16 years. She has an IQ of 55. She was abused sexually when aged 12 years in Slovakia. A number of young men were convicted of having sex with her as a minor. She spent time in a psychiatric hospital.

In a psychological report prepared in 2011 in Slovakia the psychologist reported that N "has great tendencies to lies and suggestibility. She has tendencies to distort reality....to confabulation..".

Her condition made it difficult to investigate what was later to happen to her in the United Kingdom.

She came to the United Kingdom in late 2012 with her family. She was a profoundly damaged young woman. The family first lived in the north of England where her sexual behaviour was problematic. The family moved south where her unpredictable and sexualised behaviour continued at and outside school.

THE ALLEGATIONS

N was without doubt prostituted in this country.

The criminal trial which finished in the Canterbury Crown Court at the beginning of March was intended to consider the issue whether she was being provided to men for sex and to determine who was involved.

If she was right she had been taken from her home by a number of men, drugged with "Pika" or Crystal Meth, by injection, threatened with injury to her and her family and the burning of her family home; she was taken around a number of towns in Kent where she was given to men (sometimes up to 15 or 20) mainly at kebab shops for sex.

She disappeared for days at a time. When she returned to school she was seen by social workers and Police and the story emerged, painfully, with enormous difficulty and with the inconsistencies which were to prove fatal to the criminal case.

The Police operation was huge. It involved (as the Court was told) 300 officers. Advice was taken from other Police Forces as to how to gain the confidence of N and get from her the evidence which would be necessary for a successful prosecution.

There were seven defendants. The indictment included charges of rape, sexual activity with a child, administering substances and causing child prostitution

THE TRIAL

The case was prosecuted by Eleanor laws QC leading Danny Moore. The first defendant was represented by Oliver Saxby QC and Peter Alcock. We Richard Barraclough QC leading Chris Wray of Bond Joseph represented MC.

The trial judge directed verdicts of Not Guilty in respect of two defendants at an early stage after it became clear that the allegations made against them were flawed.

The jury was sent away for almost two weeks whilst an enormous amount of work was undertaken refreshing N's memory. A recording was made of what she said as she watched her ABE interviews. Everything had to be translated into English.

At the same time all Counsel were involved in considering vast swathes of records, including those of the Police and social services from the south east and north of England, drafting schedules of inconsistencies, admissions and preparing detailed cross examination of N with the help of the intermediary.

Whilst there can be no doubt but that N had a very low IQ it would have been a mistake to treat her as having a commensurate chronological age of say 10 years because he life experience was such that she gave the appearance at least of being able to understand many of the questions asked of her. Despite the fact that she became irritated when questions were formulated in a simple and easy to understand form, it became abundantly plain that when Counsel inadvertently departed from the agreed form of questioning she failed to understand what was being asked of her.

The trial continued for two months.

At the end of the Prosecution case submissions of no case were upheld and the remaining defendants, three males and two females were acquitted.

THE INVESTIGATION

In many respects this was a unique case involving as it did a vulnerable young person with such a low IQ, history of abuse abroad and elsewhere in the UK, and such a large number of narrative records.

The Police officers in the case were decent and caring. They at all times sought to protect the vulnerable.

They also had to obtain the evidence.

They had the "missing person" records which started in the Spring of 2013. Officers spoke to N after she was reported missing by her family. She reported going willingly with individuals whom she named but who were never arrested. She spoke of the voluntary or willing (in so far as she could ever willingly agree) injection of cocaine and other substances. She spoke of a girl who again was never charged who she said had introduced her to boys who did "nice" things to her (buying her ice cream). A hint of what she was later to allege appeared in the notes where she is recorded as saying that she was injected with PIka and "the male who had injected her was JD" (one of the defendants).

It was not until February 2014 that the detailed investigation started in earnest.

The Police considered that it was not possible to go straight to Achieving Best Evidence recorded interviews because N was unlikely to cooperate. The problem with that approach, however well intentioned is that the notes of any such interview were not verbatim. The Slovak notes were missing. Thus it was not possible to know exactly what had been said by N. In any case the report of the joint visit by the officer and social worker was a narrative report. The later ABE interviews demonstrated that the narrative provided by N was unlikely to be wholly accurate.

Thus by way of an example one of the notes read that N:

"disclosed that between 2011 and 2012 she was sexually abused by several men of differing nationalities; that these men would give her drugs and do whatever they liked with her. She...