Supreme Court ends appeal hopes of man serving 11 years for ill-treating a child

A man who was said to have locked a child in a cupboard full of spiders has been denied the right to appeal against his conviction for ill-treating a child. 123 / RF

A man sentenced to 11 years in prison for ill-treating a child, including claims that he locked her in a cupboard full of spiders, ripped out her hair and tried to force her to eat her own vomit, has been denied the right to appeal his conviction by the country’s highest court.

The Supreme Court has dismissed his bid to appeal an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal, which also dismissed his request for re-examination against his conviction in relation to violent and sexual offending against a single complainant.

The man was sentenced in 2021 to 11 years in prison after the complainant brought historic matters to the notice of the police in 2018.

He was found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard, which arose out of an incident in 2003 when the man fractured the then 6-year-old complainant’s femur while pulling her out of bed.

He was also convicted on two charges of rape, two charges of unlawful sexual connection and of performing an indecent act on a person under 16.

The offences occurred between June 2010 and June 2015, beginning when the complainant was around 13 or 14 years old.

A man's attempts to appeal against his conviction for the ill-treatment of a child have gone as far as the Supreme Court, which has now also dismissed his application. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The jury found the man not guilty of two other charges of rape and unlawful sexual connection, alleged to have occurred between April 2012 and May 2014 when the complainant was around 15 or 16 years old.

He was also found not guilty of indecent assault, alleged to have occurred in April 2018.

The focus of the appeal application to the Supreme Court was the “relatively extensive evidence” given at trial about the nature of the relationship between the complainant and the applicant.

The applicant sought to reprise the argument advanced in the Court of Appeal that the trial judge failed to give the jury tailored directions regarding the purpose of the relationship evidence, and the use to which it could properly be put.

He argued that the Court of Appeal was wrong to place reliance on the lack of an objection from “experienced trial counsel” and the experience of the trial judge when assessing whether failure to provide such directions caused a miscarriage of justice.

The Supreme Court said, in its decision this month to dismiss the application for leave to appeal, that it agreed with the Court of Appeal’s decision, and there was therefore no risk of a miscarriage of justice.

The evidence given at trial suggested that the complainant was ill-treated by the applicant during her childhood.

The first source of this relationship evidence was made four days after the last of the alleged incidents (the second indecent assault, on which the applicant was found not guilty).

The second source of relationship evidence was from a member of the complainant’s household.

The ill-treatment allegations included attempting to force the child to eat her own vomit when she was 5 years of age, putting a block of soap in her mouth and trying to make her eat it, locking her in a cupboard with spiders, regularly ripping out her hair, preventing contact with her mother, making her remain in a wet bed, spitting in her food, and kicking her so hard she fell to the ground - then was threatened with being kicked again if she didn’t get up.

At the trial, the judge directed the jury to reach a decision on the verdicts uninfluenced by prejudice or sympathy, and ultimately the case revolved around the jury’s assessment of the complainant’s and other witnesses’ credibility.

In the Court of Appeal, the applicant’s counsel argued that some of the relationship evidence was inadmissible.

The argument was that the vomit incident, making the complainant stay in her wet bed, spitting into the complainant’s food, and the soap incident crossed the point at which “unfair prejudicial effect exceeded any probative value”.

The Court of Appeal considered that once it was accepted that evidence showing the relationship between the applicant and the complainant was bad and that he was unkind to her was admissible generally, there was no reason to exclude those aspects that illustrated just how bad and how unkind, which would risk “falsely sanitising the picture”.

The applicant’s primary argument in the Court of Appeal related to the lack of tailored directions about the potential prejudicial effect of the relationship evidence.

The court rejected this, taking the view that the directions given to the jury were adequate in the wider context of the trial.

A reliability warning was given about the age of the evidence related to the complainant’s childhood. The court found this could apply to the relationship evidence as well as the allegations directly relevant to the earlier charges.

However, the Court of Appeal did conclude that it might have been better if the judge had provided additional assistance to the jury on the relevance of this evidence and the use to which it could properly be put in their deliberations.

It considered the relevance of the evidence was adequately explained and would have been obvious to the jury, and was satisfied there was no real risk of a miscarriage of justice because no further tailored directions were given by the experienced trial judge.

The Supreme Court said in dismissing the application for leave to appeal that it found the Court of Appeal’s decision carried no risk of miscarriage and neither did it raise any matters of public importance.