HE DID not lay a finger on the victim. Nor was he present when two others did. Even so, an unusual legal principle saw Tony Golossian convicted of the woman's sexual assault - because he pulled the strings to make it happen.

Golossian, 63, may be the first person in NSW found guilty of sexual assaults committed through a third party, while he was somewhere else.

The Crown prosecutor, Sarah Huggett, told the jury at Golossian's trial in the District Court last year: ''You might think, 'Well how can he be charged? He was not the person who actually had sexual intercourse with her, he wasn't even there.''

The ''doctrine of innocent agency'' allows someone to be held liable for offences they facilitated, procured or encouraged through an unwitting participant, even if they did not commit the crime themselves.

A holy man, Golossian convinced two Greek Orthodox women that they had been cursed by black magic. He said they would get cancer or their families would die unless they paid him to pray over them and obeyed the instructions he supposedly received from angels.