Craig's lawyer is a slippery fuck, but thankfully, in a case involving minors, he has less liberty to be absolutely awful. As far as I gathered from my research, when the victim is a minor, the defence don't get to cross examine, for instance. In the UK, anyway. A bit more... civilised than what you see on American TV. I'm glad you found it believable.
As you may know by now, we don't get to see Craig's dad's testimony. The behind-the-scenes long and short of it is that Craig left Zoë's house after the incident and went to his father, Paul, (step-father, really, but he grew up with him as his only dad and shares his surname), so Paul saw him immediately after the fact and how it affected him. There's a bonus story of sorts in the Hubris collection (side-pieces; if you click on Nemesisverse next to the title of this story on the title page you'll find them; there are some spoilers, so don't rush ahead with reading them) that deals with Craig's backstory and some of the circumstances surrounding the trial, but it's a tough read so a lot of people skip it.
Thank you again for commenting!