A trial judge sitting without a jury in a criminal trial must do more than recite the applicable warnings and directions under s 133 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW); the judge must demonstrably take them into account in the reasoning. Reliance on demeanour assessments does not absolve a trial judge from considering undisputed facts, inherent probabilities, and the defence case. Where uncontradicted evidence is inconsistent with the Crown case and the trial judge fails to address it, the resulting convictions are unreasonable. In historical sexual offence cases, shared errors by complainants (such as identical false recollections or identical departures from police statements) raise the possibility of contamination or reconstruction that must be addressed before the evidence can be treated as independent.
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