The incest -> soul bonding is Chris' own invention, I assume, but the rest doesn't feel that way.
Soul bonding is Chris saying something he learned from various neo-hippy / new age stuff he's been exposed to, the idea in a lot of these Circles is Sex is a wonderful Joyus thing your a fool to deny, but Making "love is a bonding between partners and a unbreakable connection of two souls"
"No eye witnesses" is new. "Barb's testimony is not admissible in court" is also new. Plus, they're at least semi-credible as legal arguments and not just repeating "noting happened" until it goes away. Since Chris just returned, presumably, from competency restoration, that also means it may be the first time in a long while, if ever, Heilberg has meaningfully divulged the defense strategy to Chris. That gives us a plausible reason for this new language and thinking.
Not really Chris has been told about some things related to the legal system from a stock education on the subject and brief explanation of it - Chris learns a little on a topic and fills in the gaps from the media he has consumed for example when he was demanding money from Tito and Clyde he asked for "Non sequencial unmarked bills" that was common from the 20's to 90's in media when dealing with money ina underhand way, it was only the late 90's and 00's when Non negotiable bearer bonds even came into it and now it's crypto - Chris has been told "Unless someone says they have saw it there testimony is inadmissible" disregarding that Barb is the person making the complaint and is a victim and is entitled to make a statement.
If you give Chris a small bit of information that he can understand he will take it and misunderstand it and change it to suit himself.
The only reason Chris has picked up new phrases and alike is because they have sat him down and talked to him and he's been looking for a magical cheat phrase that will absolve him of all responsibility and it was just important sounding enough to sink into his brain.
A more productive question might be to ask what it would mean if it was their strategy and the implied facts are true, particularly with Barb. Chris seems to be trying to imply that Barb herself has said nothing happened and that claim would be rejected due to her age. That's a huge development and it would finally shut me up with my nitpicking about 'we can't be sure it's rape although that seems likely solely by probability'. Literally "big if true" with a big if.
It's more simple than that, Chris is for the first time in his life in deep trouble and Barb is at best a NPC Party member to Chris so if it comes down to Him or Barb he's going to chose himself, Remeber Chris has claimed that she instigated it and offerd to take his virginity that at best is a gross misrepresentation of what happened or a outright lie to save his own skin and move his problems onto her.
I can see his solicitor trying to muddy the waters using Barbs age and cognative health as a issue but both Chris and Barb have had a odd relationship with each other and Chris has talked positively about Incest and dreams about Sex with her, long before this - It just took Chris a long while to work up the courage to take barb on in a weakened state and molest her, but some of that is on Barb for having poor boundary with a mentally challenged child she knew was overly sexually interested ( Just a side note I would like to make a thread about this topic in general about special needs people with the mind of a child and a adult sex drive it's a horrifying topic nobody seems to be willing to address).
The alternative interpretation is that she's saying incest did happen but Heilberg told Chris they'll try to get it thrown out. That would be a hell of a longshot strategy though, I'd guess.
I doubt it, my guess is they have more than circumstantial evidence and they just want this whole mess to go away - This isn't a case anybody wants to deal with, it's not like it will win them accolades for "Bringing justice to the children abused by a trusted Teacher" or "The Wolf in sheep's clothing who preyed on our children" - This is a man with the brain of a disturbed child who has never gotten the help he needed left alone with his demeneted mother and something awful happened and now the government has to step in and clean up the mess and it could have stepped in sooner and saved everyone involved this whole situation but it was easyer not to.
