Irish Examiner view: Cross-border complexities to our laws
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Players and fans observe a tribute to the late Bobby Charlton ahead of the Premier League match at Villa Park in Birmingham. Picture: Jacob King/PA
The case in Dublin involving an anonymised Irish entertainer who was cleared of child defilement charges that would have defined him as a sex offender for the rest of his life illustrates how an imperfect and, in some ways, unsatisfactory procedure can still contribute to the judicial process by allowing accusations to be heard and tested.
The defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found not guilty of three charges of sex with an underage schoolgirl following a relationship that commenced in 2010 after a meeting at the Oxegen music festival when she was 16. He was aged 27 at the time.
During the eight-day trial, he maintained that he believed she was aged 18. The complainant accepted she initially lied that she was 18, but claimed she revealed her actual age when he asked her by text if she was “sweet 16”.
Such cases involving historic accusations can pose particular evidential problems. In this case, a phone and the texts it contained were lost before the complainant came forward in 2021.
Judge Pauline Codd told the jury it was a case of “I said, he said” with no independent corroborative evidence. She advised jurors not to be prejudiced by anything they had read about the conduct of “high-profile persons” in the context of the “MeToo” movement.
This is guidance that would have been unnecessary six years ago before the social media hashtag made such an impact on public perception.
Anonymity is a generally undesirable principle in cases before adult courts, but it was extended to defendants in the Republic in all forms of sexual offence trials following the 2018 Belfast rape hearings in which two rugby players were acquitted.
In the North, the public is banned from attending such trials, and lifelong anonymity is extended to all victims until 25 years after their death. Suspects have anonymity up to the point they are charged, a significantly different approach.
As people contemplate what Ireland might look like in the future as a united country, we can be clear that the matter of shared jurisprudence is going to be debated long and hard.
One of the metrics that might be applied is whether, in the age of social media and so-called “citizen journalists”, the cherished, and often misunderstood, principle of “justice being seen to be done” becomes further eroded.