A Grand Court jury on Friday found Travis Anthony Boyd guilty of the sexual assault of a teenage girl over a year-long period.
Boyd was convicted of two charges of indecent assault, one charge of assault by penetration, one charge of inviting a child to participate in sexual activity, and one charge of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.
The jury of three men and four women found Boyd not guilty of seven other related charges, following four and a half hours of deliberations.
The jurors had heard during the week-long trial that Boyd’s actions had begun with hugging the girl and touching her legs, and escalated into indecent assault and sexual acts, including oral sex, between 18 Aug. 2021 and 18 Aug. 2022.
During her testimony in court, the girl who was aged 14-15 at the time of the assaults, had said Boyd threatened to stab her if she told anyone what was happening. Boyd’s defence lawyer, Oliver Grimwood, had pointed out that she had not mentioned this threat to police when she was interviewed by them.
Justice Cheryll Richards, before sending the jury out of the courtroom on Friday morning to begin its deliberations, instructed the jurors to use their best judgement in determining whether inconsistencies in evidence were “significant” or whether “there is some understandable reason” for them, such as the passage of time or the traumatic nature of an incident.
On Friday morning, she summed up the closing arguments of the prosecution and defence for the jury.
Richards noted that Crown counsel Martin Mulgrew had pointed out that “the person with the most obvious motive to lie is the defendant”, and that the girl had given a “consistent and detailed account for the best part of three years”.
Mulgrew had also asked the jury what possible motive the girl could have had for making up the allegations.
Grimwood had argued that the alleged incidents had happened at a location where others could have seen or heard them happening, and asked the jury if it was realistic to think Boyd would have risked such behaviour.
“The defence submission to you is that circumstances as described by the complainant are improbable,” Richards told the jury, adding that Grimwood had pointed out that there was no “independent supporting evidence” to back up the girl’s claims.
Richards concluded by telling the jurors, “It comes down to this. There are, in effect, two different versions. The complainant is saying something happened, and she’s describing what happened, and the defendant is saying nothing happened. You have to decide where the truth lies.”
Following the delivery of the verdicts, which were unanimous, Richards remanded Boyd in custody, and set 24 Oct. as his sentencing date.
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