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The lawyer of an ex-baker who is alleged to have sexually abused a little girl 30 years ago has suggested he was deliberately targeted with “untrue” allegations because he was a “good person to wrongly accuse”, having just left prison.
The argument came from Advocate James Bell, as he defended Robert George Carrel (63), who denies sexual misconduct against a child under 10 between the late 80s and early 90s, on the second day of his Royal Court trial yesterday.
He warned the jury that their decision on the case was a “serious” one that could have a huge impact on his client’s life before attempting to discredit the complainant.
Pictured: Advocate James Bell said the alleged victim had waited until Mr Carrel was released from prison to make a complaint against him.
Advocate Bell said she had “numerous” chances to report abuse, but “coincidentally” hadn’t done so until 2016 – just after Mr Carrel had left jail – adding that she “knew” about previous allegations against him before making her own report to Police.
“Is it a coincidence or… an affront to common sense?” Advocate Bell questioned.
He maintained that the present allegations were “untrue”, but that, “unfortunately for him” Mr Carrel was “a good person to wrongly accuse”.
He later urged the jury to ask themselves whether they had heard “reliable evidence”, saying the case boiled down to the word of one person, with no independent evidence available.
He described the alleged victim as “at best confused as to where she had been taken” as a child, adding that she had not given a "compelling" account as to how Mr Carrel would have gotten away with abusing her in a house with other people.
Pictured: Advocate Bell urged the jury to ask themselves if the evidence they had heard was "reliable."
Advocate Bell later stated that the woman’s evidence “didn’t sit” with her mother’s.
“Despite her mother’s desire to support and back her up, she hasn’t provided any corroboration. She says she didn’t see any signs of concern. The low value gifts - she thought there was nothing unusual about that, she said it was what people do.”
Referring to the testimony from another woman who said Mr Carrel made her watch pornographic films and asked her to mimic what was happening on screen when she was a child, Advocate Bell said it differed from that of the complainant in this case.
He urged the jury not to place “undue reliance” on the woman, saying she had been used “to bolster a weak case”.
He also asked the jury to consider the effect of 30 years of delay, which he said meant evidence had been lost and caused prejudice to Mr Carrel by making it harder for him to “simply deny” the allegations.
Pictured: The jury is expected to retire later today to consider their verdict.
“Suspicions are not enough,” the Advocate concluded his address. “The verdict should be one of ‘not guilty’… If there’s any doubt in your mind, the defendant is entitled to the benefit of that doubt.”
Earlier in the day, the jury had heard from Crown Advocate Richard Pedley who summed up the prosecution's case.
He described the alleged victim as “unshakeable in her assertion that the abuse took place” and called her testimony “entirely consistent”, describing the alleged abuse as “a textbook case of grooming".
“He told her she was a good girl, he told her not to tell her mother”, the Crown Advocate reminded the jury.
In response to the defence’s claim that the alleged victim “has accused the wrong man, is of poor character, has a drinking problem or is doing this for money”.
Pictured: Advocate James Bell, defending.
Responding to claims that the alleged victim herself had “accused the wrong man”, and was “of poor character, has a drinking problem or is doing this for money”, the Crown Advocate ended his speech by saying that the woman “does not want anything from this process except justice”.
Royal Court Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith will be summing the case this morning before the jury of eight women and four men retires to consider their verdict.
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