There are criminal proceedings in which the events occurred in private, without witnesses, without cameras, without forensic traces. Only two people know what happened: one says there was an offence and the other denies it. The court then faces the most difficult situation in criminal proceedings: the victim’s word against the defendant’s word. This situation, common in sexual assaults, gender-based violence, child abuse, or harassment, places two fundamental values in tension: the protection of victims and the presumption of the defendant’s innocence.

The starting point is that the victim’s statement constitutes incriminating evidence and may be sufficient to convict even when it is the only available element. If corroboration through other evidence were always required, offences committed in private would be left with no possibility of being tried, rewarding those who offend without witnesses. But that admission does not require the court to believe the victim automatically: their statement is subject to a critical and rational assessment, and if that assessment yields reasonable doubts, the outcome must be acquittal.

The Supreme Court has built a doctrine based on three pillars of credibility. The first is the absence of improper motives for a false accusation: one must examine whether there is a prior conflict, a financial dispute, a contentious separation, or any circumstance that could instrumentalise the accusation. The second is the coherence and plausibility of the account: it must remain stable in its core elements throughout the proceedings and describe physically possible events. The third is persistence in the incrimination, applied with understanding towards offences such as gender-based violence, where retractions out of fear or dependence are frequent.

Peripheral corroboration is not an essential requirement, but its presence strengthens the accusation and its absence requires examining the credibility criteria with greater rigour. When the case is reduced strictly to the victim’s word, any significant weakness can generate the reasonable doubt that leads to acquittal.

For the defendant, the situation can be distressing: they know the events did not happen that way, but they lack objective evidence. The defence must not be passive: although the burden of proof falls on the prosecution, it can examine the testimony for inconsistencies, identify possible improper motives behind the accusation, and use the absence of corroboration as a weighty argument, where the events, had they occurred, would have left some trace that does not exist.

In these cases, the defence lawyer’s work is more crucial than ever: meticulously studying all of the victim’s statements, analysing the context of the relationship, and arguing rigorously why the conditions for a conviction are not met, always maintaining the balance between forcefulness and respect.

If, after all this, the court does not reach sufficient certainty, it must apply in dubio pro reo and acquit. This acquittal does not declare that the victim lied: only that guilt was not sufficiently established. It is a painful decision for real victims, but also the guarantee that protects the innocent from convictions based on false accusations, a choice of values that lies at the heart of the rule of law.