The absence of a record of a complaint in a counsellor's notes does not establish that no complaint was made, and the prosecution is not obliged to make an admission conflating the two. A prosecutor's comments on a complainant's demeanour when giving evidence are permissible as relevant to credibility assessment, but must not be framed as corroborative of the truthfulness of the evidence or as causally linked to the alleged offending. Intemperate remarks by a prosecutor may be cured by appropriate directions in the summing up, but the dissent highlights the risk that appeals to emotion and impermissible reasoning in sexual offence cases may not be adequately addressed by standard directions alone.
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