A tearful mother has told of how she gave birth in prison and brought up her young son behind bars after a ‘wholesale failure’ by prosecutors to disclose key evidence in a human trafficking trial.
Mother Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca, 25, Adrian Iordan, 26 and Anisoara Lautaru, 20, all faced lengthy jail terms after being accused of trafficking a woman and forcing her to work as a prostitute.
But the judge said the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) case was ‘fundamentally undermined’ by around 65,000 social media messages, served after the trial began, involving the complainant.
Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca, 25, tearfully told how she had to give birth in prison before the case against her collapsed
Speaking to the BBC, Miss Bosoanca said of giving birth to her son, Christian, in prison: ‘There was no-one with me. In the moments when I was supposed to be happy, I was happy but unhappy at the same time.’
She emphasised how she had been aware there was evidence proving her innocence, but was shocked at how her defence team had struggled to obtain it.
‘I knew it, at the beginning I asked for my phone, I asked for the pictures, CCTV, I asked for everything but they (prosecutors) care.’
She added: ‘They were incompetent all of them. They kept me far away from my family, from my son.’
Judge Gregory Perrins criticised the CPS’ failure to disclose the messages, adding: ‘There have been serious errors in the way in which the prosecution dealt with disclosure throughout 2017.
‘There have been failures by both the police and the CPS.’
It echoes the case of 22-year-old Liam Allan, who spent almost two years on bail ahead of a trial which was halted at Croydon Crown Court in December after messages undermining the case were found.
And Oliver Mears, 19, spent two years on bail accused of raping and assaulting a woman in July 2015 before the CPS decided to offer no evidence against him on the basis of fresh evidence.
The trial of Adrian Iordan, 26, Anisoara Lautaru, 20, (pictured outside Wood Green Crown Court on Jan 31) and Bosoanca, was halted after the complainant’s story fell apart
Speaking at Wood Green Crown Court on Wednesday, Judge Perrins said: ‘The police and the CPS should have appreciated a long time ago that this was material which potentially undermined their case and disclosed it accordingly.
‘The laws of disclosure exist to ensure that a trial is fair. If there is material which either undermines the prosecution case or assists the defendant it must be made available to the defence.
‘In this case there were repeated failures to apply the disclosure provisions correctly. There appear to have been failings on the part of both the police and the CPS.
‘The effect of these failures has been that material which fundamentally undermines the prosecution case was only disclosed due to the focused efforts of all counsel in the case.
‘Had it been made available sooner I have no doubt that the case would have been fully reviewed at a much earlier stage.’
Part-way through the trial, prosecutors offered no evidence against Miss Bosoanca, Mr Iordan, of Sandwell, Birmingham, and Miss Lautaru, of Wembley in north London.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘We accept that there were issues with the disclosure handling in this case.
‘We have today given an undertaking that we will work to establish what has happened in this case, to identify what went wrong and where lessons might be learned.’
The CPS will now undertake a full review of the case.
Judge Gregory Perrins, (file pic) sitting at Wood Green Crown Court in north London , said there had been ‘wholesale failure’ by the prosecution over its disclosures of evidence