To think this is an insane verdict

It's insane. If nothing else, surely an innocent man would understand how it works look to take a lost child to his home, away from the spot where she lost her parents?

The fact she has a drug in her system and claims he abused her... The defence seems to be "but he says he didn't do it".

It's a terrible verdict. It's ok - important - for normal people to acknowledge that. Juries are often not given all the information. I wish people could see some of the tricks Defence use to withhold relevant and important information (in at least two of my cases, confessions). Even when they have enough information to make a good choice, juries often make utterly stupid and baffling decisions. Especially the case when it involves any sort of MVAWG or sexual assault. I've seen some of the worst men you'll ever meet acquitted.

This verdict is a travesty and he will do it again.

That man is so dangerous it's frightening

So in historical sexual assault cases there is no dna evidence so it seems you can convict without it - the man wears a condom he is clear - noting the jury asked if there was dna evidence.

I haven't read the full thread I'm afraid so not sure if this has been discussed, but he was found not guilty at Isleworth court on Tuesday, and this is at the bottom of the BBC article:

On Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police arrested a 57-year-old man at Isleworth Crown Court on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.

He was taken to a police station and remains in custody.

Sadly he’s unlikely to receive a prison sentence for possession of images.

Thankfully to convict there usually needs to be a unanimous verdict.

This is a grave miscarriage of justice! He was guilty as soon as he took the girl to his hotel room WTF. I'm minded to protest this at the courts

Not anymore (I think - I’m not in the UK).

It says in the report a 57 year old man was arrested at the court and remains in custody. On suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.
Presuming it’s him then the jurors reading this may realise they fucked up.

Ifyoulook how were you on jury service if you’re a solicitor? We’re exempt?

Very disturbing case. Shocking but unsurprising that he was not found guilty such is the way with the legal system. However, we can safely surmise that the guy is dangerous. The CA court findings make for very unsettling reading. He needs to be imprisoned.

We had the opposite on our jury - a woman who insisted on voting guilty in the face of significant reasonable doubt, explicitly because the defendant was black “and they’re all mixed up with guns”. She’d decided on her verdict the moment she saw the defendant. She reckoned “she could see it in his eyes”. Just shocking.

We didn’t convict (majority verdict) but if there’d been a few more like her on the jury that poor sod would have got 10 years in prison.

I cannot fathom this verdict. If he had done this to my daughter he would wish that he had been imprisoned for life. Shame on the British justice system.

As a dad of a 9 year old girl, I find this man's actions and excuses utterly appalling. It makes me sick that someone could do that. If I found a lost child I'd get another person, a female, straight away and take her advice. There is so much more to this. I can't believe he will be let off. He will re-offend. It's sickening. I dread his next offence.

I’m glad some people read the article through to the end. At least we can be reassured he didn’t walk free.

Having been on a jury I can’t share the confidence that the right decision is always made. It was in the case I was involved with and the convicted man did eventually admit he’d been lying about his innocence prior to sentencing. But we had more than one person on my jury who was ready to say not guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence purely because they didn’t want to be responsible for someone going to jail. The accused was a man in his 40s who led a sophisticated drug importation ring, not some kid who’d been led astray.

Quite, and if any government cared about takling violence against women and children they'd set up a commission to consult on what system set up to ensure justice for women and children would look like.

What we have makes a mockery of us all.

Yes because reasonable doubt doesn’t mean someone didn’t commit a crime. It just means the evidence isn’t strong enough to convict.

I agree with you. I am a solicitor - not criminal but like all qualified barristers and solicitors studied both criminal law and the practice of criminal law. I will defend the presumption of innocence principle, the right of the most heinous criminals to proper representation and so on til the cows come home.

But dear God having served on a jury where the defendant was SO clearly and blatantly guilty (a fact that was later confirmed by the judge in her summing up at sentencing) I was horrified by the perverse thinking of some of my fellow jurors. I literally had to fight tooth and nail to get some of them to put aside a deep dislike of the victim in the case to even engage in basic common sense. It made me very sad really.

The issue with “beyond all reasonable doubt” is that it’s very hard to convey to jurors what kind of doubt might be reasonable. The burden of proof is not 100% absolute certainty but juries get very caught up in the idea of “well I can’t be 100% sure of what happened”.

It’s a generalisation - but who gets hurt behind closed doors? Women and children that’s who. So I feel they bear the brunt of that lack of ability of some jurors potentially to understand that sexual assault, rape, child abuse can be hard to prove.

More so than violence against men that may be more likely to happen on the street, outside the pub where CCTV can “show” them.

It makes me so sad. I don’t know what the answer is mind you.

I honestly do not know what is going on in this country.

You can't get a criminal conviction because you think something probably happened. That's how the law works, and there are good reasons for that, plenty of things people think probably happened, didn't.

The amount of abject stupidity on this thread is both shocking and appalling in equal measure.

Not jury I've ever sat on, or worked alongside professionally, is, by any account, the "establishment". These are men and women off the street - hardly the ruling classes.

The jury will have heard days or weeks of evidence. From experience, it's incredibility rare for a journalist to remain in court for a fraction of that. Therefore, what you see in the media is typically a few quotes from perhaps the opening day of trial. It is rarely a fulsome, or even representative, description of everything the jury heard. If anyone believes they can decide a case based solely on the media coverage, they are at best deluded.

I’m just here to repeat the point made by some previous posters… and that is, to read ALL of the BBC news article right to the end.