The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A MAN accused of indecently assaulting a sleeping woman after she gave him a ride home has been acquitted, after a Supreme Court judge found that the woman had no independent memory of the touching and that the home security footage at the centre of the case could not be shown to be complete.

Justice Weech-Gomez found Charles Sealy III not guilty of indecent assault in a written decision dated October 14. Justice Weech-Gomez said she was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Sealy massaged the woman, but that the prosecution had failed to prove she did not consent.

The case was heard without a jury under the Supreme Court Trial by Judge Alone (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, which came into force on March 31, 2025, and allows defendants to have a judge decide their guilt or innocence rather than a jury. Sealy chose that option after pleading not guilty.

Prosecutors alleged that on January 30, 2025, Sealy took advantage of the 29-year-old woman, a friend he had known since 2012, after she fell asleep on her living room couch. They said he took olive oil from her kitchen and hid it behind a couch cushion, exposed himself beside her, then lifted her dress, removed her underwear, unclasped her bra, touched her buttocks and struck her bottom.

The defence accepted that the touching happened but said the encounter was consensual, and that the woman was awake and relaxed, not asleep.

Justice Weech-Gomez found that the woman’s account had shifted repeatedly. Although she told the court in her evidence-in-chief that she had been “sleeping, definitely”, she said under cross-examination: “I have no memory of the incident.” Her evidence moved between what she remembered, what she became aware of as she woke, and what she later saw on the footage, the judge said.

“The Court notes that during her testimony the witness recalls parts that support her account of the incident, and none of the parts on which the defence seeks to rely, which fall inside the window in which she says she was unaware,” Justice Weech-Gomez said.

The judge also questioned the reliability of the recordings. The woman’s home had motion-activated indoor cameras that recorded in short clips, and she sent the footage to police over WhatsApp. Detective Sergeant Ernest Pratt, who downloaded it, accepted that he never examined the original recording device, did not generate the digital fingerprints, known as hash values, used to prove files have not been altered, and could not say whether police received everything that was recorded. “I can only say what was sent,” he said.

The woman herself first said she gave police “everything that was on there”, but later said she did not provide the clip of a key conversation. Justice Weech-Gomez found the defendant should be given the benefit of the doubt about what may or may not have happened during the gaps.

The judge found the woman’s descriptions of one moment, when Sealy lifted her dress, “differ materially”. The woman told the court she was trying to pull her dress down while he held it up. But Justice Weech-Gomez said that in the video, Sealy “assisted in pulling the dress down and immediately jumped back”.

The woman told the court she was frightened when she realised what had happened. “I was not furious. I was afraid,” she said, though she later accepted feeling more than one emotion. She said she hid from Sealy that she was watching the footage on her phone, asked her children’s nanny to stay with the children, and drove him away to two locations, Tuga and Baha Mar, to get him out of the house and away from her children without escalating the situation. She did not scream, call for help or call police that night.

She reported the matter on February 1, about two days later. She said she delayed because she feared being judged and blamed, and that speaking with her father helped her overcome that fear.

Her partner, who was not at home that night, told the court he received a WhatsApp message he believed came from Sealy, which read in part: “I f***ed up.” The partner said he saw it as an admission. The defence argued it was an apology for betraying a friend by becoming intimate with his partner. Police Constable Benjamin Johnson, who interviewed Sealy, accepted that the message did not point to a lack of consent.

Justice Weech-Gomez found the partner’s evidence was not independent and could not corroborate the woman’s account, since he did not witness the incident and relied on what she told him and his own reading of the footage. She also noted conflicts between his evidence and the woman’s, including when the pair left her workplace and how he first learned of the incident.

The woman told the court she had picked Sealy up near a bar and had him enter her home through the back door, out of view of the front door camera, because she had argued with her partner the day before and wanted to avoid another confrontation. She said she felt tired and unwell while driving and stopped at Goodman’s Bay before deciding to take Sealy to her home, two minutes away, where he could arrange another ride.

In his police interview, Sealy did not deny his involvement but said the encounter was mutual and consensual. He did not give evidence at trial, which is his right, and Justice Weech-Gomez said no adverse inference was drawn from his silence.

Prosecutors Shanika Carey and Betty Wilson appeared for the Crown. Christina Galanos and Kristina Saunders represented Sealy.