The appellant challenged child sexual offence convictions and an indeterminate sentence imposed following a dangerous offender designation.
The court held that one conviction had to be set aside because the trial judge misapprehended a child complainant’s videotaped statement on the central issue of who issued the alleged invitation to sexual touching, requiring a new trial on that count.
The remaining convictions were upheld, despite an error in using one complainant’s evidence as corroborative similar fact evidence, because the verdict on those counts would inevitably have been the same.
On sentence, the court found an error in overstating the facts underlying one prior sexual assault conviction, but held that neither that error nor the set-aside predicate conviction created any reasonable possibility of a different result on the dangerous offender issue.
