A trial judge should not direct a jury to assume that a witness would have maintained their version had a denial been put in cross-examination; the appropriate response to a failure to comply with the rule in Browne v Dunn may be a Foley-type direction or no direction at all. Where a child complainant's retraction is consistent, definitive, and maintained over time, and the complainant's evidence was the only evidence of the offence, an acquittal rather than a retrial may be appropriate even where the circumstances of the retraction are not fully investigated.
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