A jury may accept the substance of a child complainant's account of sexual abuse while rejecting the child's evidence about surrounding circumstances such as the timing of drawings and scrapbook entries, provided the discrepancies can be explained by the child's young age and imprecise recollection. Where an accused is acquitted of some sexual offence charges, it ought not be assumed that the jury did not find the complainant credible, particularly where the evidence on the acquitted counts was considerably less detailed than on the convicted counts. The case illustrates a sharp division on the limits of this approach where the child's evidence about recent conduct (making drawings weeks or months earlier) could not be true.
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