Magistrate Belinda Wallington

I find the accused not guilty and I am not persuaded that in the absence of the element of indecency that the touching amounted to common assaults.

Were the current laws applicable, it is possible that the result may be different.

I had no reason to doubt C2's truthfulness, but there were issues of reliability.

Her memories of what she observed and was told about, of offending against others, was confused and sometimes prone to exaggeration.

It is clear that on 9 May 2014 she could not have made the observations of the common law assault on C1 in the circumstances she described.

Possibly she was in the wings, but this is not the evidence she gave.

C2's accounts of the offending against her evolved.

But the magistrate ruled this...

Number 51.

There were further questions about the ability of someone hiding behind the door in the dressing room, though the evidence, as I understood it, was that he jolted up and stood behind the door, not that he was actually hidden.

The magistrate even ruled that...

Number 545.

The conclusion I drew from this evidence was that the meetings between the complainants were not so much to exchange details of the offending, but to decide what, if anything, the women could do about it.

The magistrate ruled... Number 749.

I was not persuaded that there was any evidence of collusion between the complainants.