F and G (Children) (Sexual Abuse Allegations)

In a child-abuse fact-finding appeal, concise reasons will suffice where the judgment as a whole demonstrates engagement with the material issues and explains the decision. A judge need not address every evidential point or submission separately.

Departures from ABE guidance, and a child’s difficulty understanding truth and lies, require careful evaluation of reliability. They do not automatically prevent reliance on a child’s allegation. An appellate court will not interfere with the trial judge’s assessment and weighing of evidence without a clear justification.

Care proceedings concerning F and her half-sister, G, followed F’s allegations that D, the mother’s former partner, had sexually abused her. Recorder Evans found that D had sexually assaulted and penetrated F on a number of occasions, using a blue object and his finger. He found that F’s father had not abused her.

D appealed. He alleged that the recorder had insufficiently analysed the context and reliability of F’s allegations, defects in the initial questioning and ABE interview, F’s understanding of truth and lies, evidence suggesting coaching, inconsistencies, F’s behaviour, and D’s credibility. The central issue was whether the recorder’s concise reasons revealed a material failure to evaluate the evidence before making the findings.

1. Appeal dismissed. Baker LJ, with whom Elisabeth Laing and William Davis LJJ agreed, held that the recorder’s reasons, read as a whole, sufficiently demonstrated that he had engaged with the material evidence and submissions. A judge need not set out every argument or item of evidence. The essential requirement is an analysis that explains the decision.

2. The recorder had identified the serious departures from ABE guidance in both the initial questioning and the ABE interview. He was entitled to find that the deficiencies did not prevent reliance on the interview when considered with the whole evidence. F’s difficulty with truth and lies required caution, but did not automatically invalidate everything she said. The recorder gave legitimate reasons for treating the early allegation against D as cogent and clear, while giving less weight to later, more prompted and less coherent accounts.

3. The recorder was also entitled to regard the core allegation as reliable despite differences in detail and other unreliable statements by F. Her repeated identification of D in different circumstances could properly be distinguished from the other reports. The assessment and weight of the behavioural evidence were primarily matters for the trial judge; in any event, the finding ultimately rested on F’s allegation and the medical evidence, rather than behaviour alone.

4. The failure expressly to address the maternal grandmother’s evidence suggesting that F had been coached was an omission, but it did not justify overturning the findings in the context of the judgment as a whole.

5. Requests for clarification under the Family Procedure Rules 2010 procedure should identify a material omission, genuine ambiguity, inadequate reasons, or another real defect. They are not a means of rearguing the case or requiring the judge to identify the weight attached to each evidential strand. The recorder was not obliged to answer the extensive request made here. The framework in Re S [2019] EWCA Civ 1845 was valuable for similar cases, but was not mandatory in every child-abuse fact-finding case.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division)— dismissed D’s appeal and upheld the fact-finding conclusions: [2022] EWCA Civ 1002.
• Family Court at Derby— Recorder Evans, in a judgment handed down on 13 April 2022, found that D had sexually abused and penetrated F on a number of occasions.