Janick Fielding secures acquittal for client accused of rape

Janick Fielding secured acquittals on both rape allegations faced by a young man who had been in a toxic relationship for three years. The defendant was both naïve and very immature and the complainant had a number of complex, well-masked mental health difficulties as well as a history of fabricating allegations of rape and sexual assault. Having been instructed on the eve of trial, Janick discovered almost a thousand pages of detailed police reports relating to previous complaints made by the young woman, school reports, social services records and mental health assessments. Working into the early hours of the morning for several days, up to the point where the Judge instructed him to get more sleep, Janick was able to present a cogent argument for inclusion by agreement for a substantial number of those fabricated accounts. He discovered too, having pressed the stand-in officer in charge of the case early in the trial for the source material relating to an acceptance by the police that previous fabrications were caused by a neurological condition, that no such evidence had ever been received by them and that in fact the complainant’s mother had made it up and they had accepted it. As the four-day case overran into a fourth week, Janick was able to cross-examine the original officer in charge, and laid bare the abject failure of the police to investigate multiple leads demonstrating the complainant was motivated to create false allegations to take revenge or to get her own way. Despite being prosecuted by King’s Counsel, Janick was successful in extremely challenging circumstances. Instructed by Sidra Quadri of ABV.