The Supreme Court has overturned a decision to dismiss charges against a man accused of sexually touching a child.

While magistrate Auralee Cassidy found this year that the defendant had a mental impairment that hindered his understanding of his actions, Puisne Judge Alan Richards found that she had misapplied medical evidence in the case.

In a recent judgment, Mr Justice Richards said: “If she had not improperly admitted the medical evidence or misdirected herself as to its relevance, the magistrate would have been bound to have concluded from the evidence that the respondent, in committing the acts she found proved, must have been acting for a sexual purpose.

“In my judgment, no reasonable magistrate could have concluded otherwise on the facts as she found them to be.”

The defendant, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, denied a charge that he sexually touched a young person on an unknown date between July 2016 and August 2018.

During a trial this year, Magistrates’ Court heard that the victim, who was under the age of 14, had gone to the defendant’s house to watch a film with other children.

The victim said that when she was left alone with the defendant temporarily, he exposed himself to her and urged her to have sexual contact with him.

The victim wrote about the incident in a journal, but did not tell her family until 2023 because she was “scared and disgusted”.

While defence counsel challenged the credibility and reliability of the victim, Ms Cassidy wrote in her judgment that she accepted her evidence.

The magistrate, however, said medical evidence before the court showed that the defendant had a mental impairment that left him without the mens rea — a Latin phrase meaning “guilty mind” — to commit the offence.

While she dismissed the case against the defendant, the Crown appealed the ruling in the Supreme Court.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Richards said that reports provided to the court described the defendant’s intellectual functioning using terms such as “in the moderately to mildly impaired range” and “moderate cognitive impairment”.

He noted that only one of the reports was prepared with knowledge of the allegations, and it focused on his ability to enter a plea, rather than whether he could have acted with a sexual purpose.

Given the nature of the reports, Mr Justice Richards said Ms Cassidy did not have the foundation to reach the conclusion that she had.

He wrote: “Although the basis upon which she found the medical evidence to be relevant, and so admitted it was not explicitly stated, the use to which the magistrate ultimately put the evidence was one which exceeded its scope.

“The evidence was not relevant in that way and was, therefore, not properly admitted for that purpose. In the absence of some other basis for admitting it, it was improperly admitted.

“If it was somehow properly admitted on some other unstated basis, the magistrate misdirected herself as to its relevance.

“That was a wrong decision in law, which entitles me to set aside the dismissal of the information.”

Mr Justice Richards also noted that Ms Cassidy had found that the Crown had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had done what the victim accused him of.

In all the circumstances, Mr Justice Richards allowed the Crown’s appeal and remitted the matter back to the Magistrates’ Court with a direction to enter a finding of guilt and proceed according to the law.

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