When an appellate court conducts its own independent assessment of whether verdicts are unreasonable in a judge-alone trial, it is entitled to give such weight to properly admitted tendency evidence as it thinks appropriate, even if the trial judge did not rely on it. The prohibition in s 293 of the Criminal Procedure Act on cross-examination about other sexual activity applies even where the defence is misattribution (that another person committed the offence), and the exception in s 293(4)(a) requires the other sexual activity to have occurred 'at or about the time' of the charged offence or to form 'part of a connected set of circumstances' — assaults occurring months apart do not satisfy this requirement. A trial judge's direction requiring tendency to be established beyond reasonable doubt from one count before it can be used on other counts is too restrictive.
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