Sexual Offences


Chambers has a wealth of experience in dealing with cases involving sexual offences, from providing pre-charge advice through to fully contested trials in the Crown Court and hearings in the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Members are regularly instructed to both prosecute and defend in the most serious, technically difficult and highly sensitive cases, often where expert and technological evidence is a key part of a trial. Our members are well versed in both the presentation and the challenging of experts in DNA evidence, medical and forensic experts and those involved in data examination.

Our Rape & Serious Sexual Offences (RASSO) specialists all receive training in dealing with child and vulnerable witnesses, and clients or defendants with mental health impairments.
We treat every case with sensitivity and care using the skill and expertise our members have built over many years of experience and practice.

We prosecute and defend in cases of;

  • Rape
  • Sexual assault
  • Grooming
  • Child exploitation
  • Human trafficking
  • Historic Sexual Offences
  • Possessing and distributing indecent images

Case examples

R v T - Snaresbrook Crown Court Daniel Cohen defending a man who was charged with Rape and Attempted Rape.  Allegations were made by 2 unrelated complainants following meeting the defendant during the course of his employment as a bus driver.  A third complainant made an allegation of sexual assault.  The defendant maintained that all sexual activity with the complainants was consensual.  The defendant was unanimously acquitted despite the Crown's reliance on a significant degree of similarity between the allegations made.

R v G, Clara Sibanda prosecuted a dangerous defendant for sexual communications and indecent images that had generated considerable media interest. The sentence imposed in total was one of 11 years in total.
Clara Sibanda has also been instructed in cases involving the sexual assault of an off-duty police officer by another serving member of the Metropolitan Police, the trial of a Chinese national accused of the sexual touching of a vulnerable schoolgirl on a London High Street as well as the successful intimidation of the victim of domestic abuse, by a defendant, during his imprisonment while awaiting trial for assaults on her.

R v W (Defence): Jonathan Mole represented a man in his 70s charged with the assault by penetration of a 7-year-old girl. The defendant was a friend of the young girl’s family. The family were moving house and the girl was said to be in the care of the defendant for a period of time. She alleged that he had sexually abused her.
Defending the matter required full submissions of proposed questioning of the young girl and those questions ‘vetted’ by an intermediary and the Trial Judge.
The defendant was acquitted by the jury.

R v B Stephen Wells defended in a rape at Chelmsford Crown Court. The allegation was that the defendant had targeted a vulnerable woman with severe health issues, having met her on an online dating site. The defendant was acquitted

R v K & P, Woolwich Crown Court, 2023 Callum Morgan prosecuted a trial for making indecent images of children. The defendants had been accessing a Zoom conference where indecent images were being screen shared. Involved legal argument on definition of “making.” Both defendants were convicted. 

R v S [2024] – St Albans Crown Court Harry Stallard secured the conviction of a man who followed a lone female in his car before sexually exposing himself to her in a Hertfordshire town.

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