MH appealed from a ruling that his conviction for sexual offences against a child in a Spanish court is admissible in the care proceedings as evidence with presumptive weight, so that the fact of the conviction will stand as proof of the facts underlying it unless MH rebuts that presumption on the balance of probability. The effect of the ruling is that in these family proceedings the foreign conviction will be treated in the same way as if it was a conviction of a court in the United Kingdom.
MH’s central argument is that the decision of this court in Hollington v Hewthorn [1943] 2 All ER 35; [1943] 1 KB 587 bound the judge and binds this court to reach the opposite conclusion, namely that the Spanish conviction is not admissible in evidence and that in consequence the burden remains on the local authority to prove the facts underlying the conviction in the same way as if he had never been convicted.
Judges:
Lord Justice Bean
Lord Justice Peter Jackson
And
Lord Justice Dingemans
Citations:
[2022] EWCA Civ 1118, [2022] WLR(D) 348
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Evidence, Children
Updated: 20 August 2022; Ref: scu.680249