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CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS ACT (NORTHERN IRELAND) 1968 - SECT 174

Presumption and determination of age.

174.(1) Where a person, whether charged with an offence or not, is brought
before any court otherwise than for the purpose of giving evidence, and it
appears to the court that he is a child or young person, the court shall make
due inquiry as to the age of that person, and for that purpose shall take such
evidence as may be forthcoming at the hearing of the case, but an order or
judgment of the court shall not be invalidated by any subsequent proof that
the age of that person has not been correctly stated to the court, and the age
presumed or declared by the court to be the age of the person so brought
before it shall, for the purposes of this Act, be deemed to be the true age of
that person.

(2) Where in any charge or indictment for any offence under this Act or any of
the offences mentioned in Schedule 1, except an offence under the
Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, it is alleged that the person by or in
respect of whom the offence was committed was a child or young person or was
under or had attained any specified age, and he appears to the court to have
been at the date of the commission of the alleged offence a child or
young person, or to have been under or to have attained the specified age, as
the case may be, he shall for the purposes of this Act be presumed at that
date to have been a child or young person or to have been under or to have
attained that age, as the case may be, unless the contrary is proved.

(3) Where, in any charge or indictment for any offence under this Act or any
of the offences mentioned in Schedule 1, it is alleged that the person in
respect of whom the offence was committed was a child or was a young person,
it shall not be a defence to prove that the person alleged to have been a
child was a young person or the person alleged to have been a young person was
a child in any case where the acts constituting the alleged offence would
equally have been an offence if committed in respect of a young person or
child respectively.

(4) Where a person is charged with an offence under this Act in respect of a
person apparently under a specified age it shall be a defence to prove that
the person was actually of or over that age.

© 1968 Crown Copyright

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