Leading Caroline Harris, Tim secured the acquittal of a young adult on charges of facilitating transport with a view to exploitation after a seven week trial in a case which had a history of serious disclosure failings. 

The two complainants were aged between 15 and 17 at the time of alleged offences but made complaints as adults in 2021.  They asserted that they had been encouraged to attend, or had been transported to, parties by the defendants at which drink and drugs were supplied and at which sexual activity took place.  Tim’s client, 17 at the time, denied the allegations, being simply present at parties.  He was the youngest of the six defendants charged in the proceedings.

Through a series of focussed disclosure applications made over several months before the trial, following a detailed trawl of social services records, Tim identified significant material that was capable of suggesting that each complainant had been motivated to make her (very late) claims out of a desire to obtain police assistance in moving to better local authority accommodation, which  assistance had been provided.  This material had originally been extensively redacted in a manner which concealed much of what was relevant, and which was revealed in more detail following submissions made by Tim.

Tim also identified material that showed that, far from having been corrupted by the  men as claimed, the complainants had in fact partied and taken drugs with several other groups of people before meeting them , and continued doing so after they had parted ways, and that these occasions had not properly been investigated by the police.  These other groups were of western descent, the defendant being from Afghanistan. 

Tim highlighted fundamental failures in the prosecution disclosure process concerning the analysis of mobile telephones and social media accounts.  Material had been ignored by the prosecution, which had simply relied on the complainants to provide videos and photographs of the parties alleged to support their claims.  A first trial was abandoned as a proper review of evidence had not taken place by the prosecution, following which many thousands of pages of material were finally disclosed.

At re-trial Tim was able to demonstrate significant flaws in the complainants’ assertions of corruption and vulnerability and was also able to demonstrate that one of the complainants had deleted important material from her SnapChat account. 

The defendant  was acquitted of all charges.