Girl’s denial fails to quash grandfather’s sex conviction

A MAN jailed for sexually abusing his granddaughter will not have his conviction quashed despite the 17-year-old now claiming she lied.

The grandfather, who is 68, must continue to serve his 12-year sentence even though the girl, who was the main witness in the case against him, has said that she invented the allegations.

Senior judges at the Court of Appeal were told that she did it to gain attention from family and friends, but that after seeing her grandfather jailed, she realised she had to “do the right thing”.

However, the judges ruled that her original evidence at the trial in January last year at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London remained believable. In a ruling handed down on Friday, the judges found that the girl’s change of heart seemed motivated by regret that her grandfather had been imprisoned.

The girl, known as M, first made the allegations to a counsellor in 2016, when she was 14. Three months after the allegations were raised, he was charged with abusing her on several occasions. The girl’s mother, M’s counsellor, and a police officer all gave evidence in the trial. The man was convicted in February last year. The appeal was launched on the grounds that M had given false evidence.

M produced a 14-paragraph statement retracting her story, saying she wished to “withdraw my allegations as the alleged incidents did not in fact take place”. But, concluding the trial, the court ruled that there was “no proper basis for rejecting M’s original evidence”, adding: “We reject the veracity and reliability of her subsequent retraction statement, put in after sentence was announced.”