The attorney general’s office yesterday dropped a case against a 48-year-old Narragansett man who had been charged with raping a woman 32 years ago when both he and the alleged victim were 16 years old.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch announced the decision yesterday afternoon after his office filed a form to have the case against Harold Allen, of 30 Riverview Rd., dismissed in Washington County Superior Court, in South Kingstown. The case against Allen was based on memories that the alleged victim had repressed until recently, and a spokesman for Lynch’s office said state prosecutors did not believe that her testimony would be allowed in court.

“Decisions from many state Supreme Courts from across the country have made clear that repressed or recovered memory is a genuinely contentious legal issue,” Michael J. Healey said. “We are acknowledging that her evidence would not likely hold up. I suppose there is a very small chance, but it would be very small.”

The dismissal form cites a 1996 Rhode Island Supreme Court case, State v. Quattrocchi, which requires any case that relies on repressed memory to have a pre-trial hearing on the evidence.“The State dismisses despite its belief that the allegation made by the victim and corroborated by independent evidence established probable cause. However, the high burden for admissibility, at trial, of testimony based on repressed memory as set forth by the court in Quattrocchi provides a legal impediment that the state is unlikely to overcome.”

The case against John Quattrocchi III, who in 1994 was first convicted of sexually molesting a girl a decade earlier, was the first tried in Rhode Island based on an accuser’s recovered memory — the belief that a lost memory of a traumatic experience can be “recovered” years later.

In 1996, the Supreme Court threw out his conviction, and set precedent for pre-trial evidentiary hearings on any case that relies on recovered memories.

Although the attorney general’s office was familiar with the requirements under Quattrocchi before filing charges against Allen, prosecutors did not consider them until after the indictment against him was returned, said Healey.

“We take seriously the allegations of victims, and we took this victim’s allegation seriously,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been doing our job if we didn’t present the case to a grand jury.”

The accuser made a complaint to the North Kingstown Police Department on June 15, 2006. No statute of limitations applies to charges of first-degree sexual assault.

The case was referred to the attorney general’s office, which presented it to a grand jury on May 25 of this year. The grand jury returned an indictment for first-degree sexual assault against Allen.

On May 31, he pleaded not guilty to the charge after voluntarily appearing in Washington County Superior Court and was released on bail. According to court records, he was accused of raping the girl in North Kingstown between April 1 and Oct. 31, 1975.

Allen’s lawyer, Walter R. Stone, has said that his client and the woman grew up in the same neighborhood and that they never had sexual intercourse.

He was notified of the dismissal by the media yesterday, but said he would still go ahead with a motion to compel prosecutors to hand over the evidence that was presented to the grand jury. He said he has been trying to see the evidence since Allen was arraigned.

“We’re going to be in court tomorrow,” he said last night. “I think we’re entitled to see what was presented to the grand jury.”

He told Allen of the dismissal as soon as he heard the news. Stone called the case a “rollercoaster” for his client and questioned why prosecutors even went forward with the case in the first place in light of the requirements under Quattrocchi.

“This whole man’s life has been ruined,” he said. “I’m wondering if they just put the case into the grand jury to placate the woman.”

Stacey Veroni, a deputy chief in the criminal division of the attorney general’s office, notified the victim beforehand of the decision to dismiss the case, according to Healey. The news release said she “understood and accepted” the decision.

“Perhaps a prosecutor’s greatest power is to dismiss a charge and end an unwarranted criminal prosecution,” Lynch said in the news release.

akuffner@projo.com