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<\/p>\nA south-east Queensland childcare worker has been cleared of sexually abusing three children in his care.<\/p>\n
Joshua James Capps faced a District Court trial in Brisbane this week, charged with three counts of indecent treatment of a child and one count of rape in late 2023.<\/p>\n
After retiring to deliberate on Friday morning, the jury returned its verdict in less than three hours.<\/p>\n
When it was handed down, Mr Capps cried and hugged some of his supporters.<\/p>\n
Footage played for jury<\/p>\n
During the trial, the jury heard allegations Capps digitally raped a three-year-old child on a slide.<\/p>\n
The jury heard he also allegedly “touched tongues” with that child, and two others in separate incidents whilst “playing doctors” with them.<\/p>\n
Mr Capps denied committing any sexual acts against the children and gave evidence in his own defence,.<\/p>\n
He told the jury he paid for corrupted CCTV vision to be fixed as he believed it would “exonerate him”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The allegations related to children in Mr Capps’s care. (Supplied: Adobe)<\/p>\n
Some of the footage was played to the jury during the trial, including an section that was alleged to have depicted one of the offences taking place.<\/p>\n
However, prosecutors accepted, due to the angle of the camera, it could not explicitly be seen.<\/p>\n
This same offending was allegedly witnessed by a parent of another victim, who then reported Mr Capps to the centre.<\/p>\n
That woman also gave evidence during the trial.<\/p>\n
‘Mr Capps is not guilty’<\/p>\n
During closing addresses on Thursday, defence lawyer Jack Kennedy told the jury his client was innocent.<\/p>\n
“Mr Capps is not guilty of these charges,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Kennedy told the jury they “no doubt” would have been “absolutely horrified” at the nature of the allegations.<\/p>\n
“That’s understandable, that’s human nature but that prejudice has no part to play in your deliberations,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Kennedy accepted sexual offending against children was serious, and there were “genuine complainants” but told the jury “that’s not the case here”.<\/p>\n
He criticised the witnesses’ evidence, calling it unreliable, and told the jury the allegations did not “make sense”.<\/p>\n
“This is a case where there has been a misunderstanding,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Capps, who was on bail throughout the proceedings, was formally discharged and free to leave court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A south-east Queensland childcare worker has been cleared of sexually abusing three children in his care. Joshua James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,10947,502,1108,67535,37484,304012,44,13396],"class_list":["post-627218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-childcare","tag-children","tag-court","tag-daycare","tag-indecent-assault","tag-joshua-james-capps","tag-news","tag-rape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}