AAB v R
[2024] EWCA Crim 880
R v AJW
29 June 2023
[2023] EWCA Crim 803
Court of Appeal
A young woman was wrongly convicted of a crime because nobody realised she was a child victim of trafficking. The court threw out the case because if they'd known the truth, she wouldn't have been charged.
Key Facts
- •Applicant convicted in 2014 of conspiring to avoid immigration enforcement by deception.
- •Applicant, a Nigerian national, arrived in the UK on a student visa.
- •Applicant and KF planned a sham marriage to secure UK residency.
- •Applicant claimed at trial she was coerced into the marriage by KF due to threats.
- •Applicant claimed she was a minor at the time, having been trafficked and subjected to sexual abuse.
- •No age assessment was conducted at the time of the trial.
- •Post-conviction, applicant's asylum claim led to a finding that she was a victim of modern slavery.
- •Fresh evidence included medical reports and statements supporting her claims of trafficking and abuse.
Legal Principles
Open justice is the norm, but anonymity orders are permissible to protect the proper administration of justice.
R v AFU [2023] EWCA Crim 23 at [1]
Principles relating to abuse of process and offending predating the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
AFU (supra) at [105] to [113]
Whether the applicant would or might not have been prosecuted in the public interest.
This case
Decisions to prosecute are ordinarily for the prosecutor.
R (Barons Pub Ltd) v Staines Magistrates’ Court [2013] EWHC 898 Admin , at [51(i)]
Outcomes
Anonymity order granted.
To protect the applicant from the risk of re-trafficking.
Leave to appeal granted, fresh evidence admitted, and time extended.
Applicant's conviction is unsafe due to the failure to identify her as a child victim of trafficking and the resulting prosecutorial decision being made on a false premise.
Conviction quashed.
The prosecution would not have occurred had the applicant's true age and victim status been known; prosecution was not in the public interest.