[2009] EWCA Crim 618

In order to avoid abuse of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.41, a judge should not regard evidence or questions about previous complaints of sexual assaults which were said to be false as being about a previous false complaint, rather than about sexual behaviour, unless there was a proper evidential basis for asserting that the previous complaint was made and was untrue. A proper evidential basis was less than a strong factual foundation for concluding that the previous complaint was false, but there had to be some material from which such a conclusion could be drawn, each case being dependent on its own facts.

CA (Crim Div) (Dyson LJ, Rafferty J DBE, Sweeney J)

17/03/2009