Background
A District Court jury in Cairns convicted DCZ on 29 July 2025 of two counts of indecent treatment of his granddaughter, who was under 12. Count 1 concerned an allegation that, while the child was resting in a bedroom during school holidays in 2023, DCZ put her hand inside his pants. Count 3 concerned an allegation that, while alone with the child in a pool on 5 December 2023, he put his hand inside her bikini bottoms and touched her vagina. A third pool-related count, alleging that he put the child’s hand in his pants, was not pursued by the Crown and was the subject of a nolle prosequi.
The child’s account was supported in material respects by her disclosures to her father’s partner and father, and by her initial police statement. The defence relied substantially on the grandmother’s evidence that the alleged acts could not have occurred because the child was supervised during the bedroom incident and because DCZ had left the pool when she did. DCZ appealed, challenging the reasonableness of the verdicts, the jury directions, aspects of the prosecutor’s closing address, and the treatment of the father’s partner’s evidence as preliminary complaint evidence.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. It independently assessed the evidence and held that the verdicts were open to the jury. The child had not recanted the allegation underlying the discontinued count; nearly two years later, she simply could not remember that aspect of the pool incident. Her accounts of the acts charged in counts 1 and 3 remained materially consistent. The jury could accept her evidence and reject the grandmother’s evidence, including because the grandmother’s reconstructed estimate of the length of her shower and her immediate dismissal of the child’s complaint gave the jury a basis to doubt her reliability and objectivity.
The trial judge was not required to direct the jury that it had to reject the grandmother’s evidence beyond reasonable doubt before convicting. That evidence created factual conflict, rather than establishing exculpatory intermediate facts that required a special direction. The prosecutor did not accuse the grandmother of perjury, although the Court held that the prosecutor’s reference to the child’s “only day in court” and her seeking justice was inappropriate. In context, however, the remarks did not cause a miscarriage of justice, particularly given the judge’s direction to decide the case without sympathy or prejudice. The father’s partner’s evidence was properly admitted and used as preliminary complaint evidence because the child’s disclosure was made in response to an open question asking whether she wished to explain what had happened.
Key Takeaways
- A complainant’s later inability to remember one alleged act is not necessarily a recantation or a basis to treat convictions on other counts as unreasonable.
- Conflicting alibi-like evidence from a family witness does not automatically require a direction that the jury must reject that witness beyond reasonable doubt.
- An improper prosecutorial appeal to sympathy will not require a new trial unless it realistically affected the jury’s reasoning to guilt.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the appellate court’s independent role in reviewing an unreasonable-verdict ground while still giving proper weight to the jury’s advantage in assessing witnesses. It also confirms that credibility disputes between a child complainant and a family member will ordinarily be resolved by the jury under standard directions where the prosecution case depends on the complainant’s reliability.
For trial practice, the case draws a line between permissible submissions challenging a witness’s reliability and an allegation of perjury, while underscoring that prosecutors should avoid emotive calls for justice or sympathy. It also applies the established approach that a child’s disclosure may be preliminary complaint evidence when it is made as a substantive response to an open invitation to explain events.