AREAS OF PRACTICE > Sexual Assault & Sexual Harassment
Helping victims of sexual assault
The Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) has released a landmark report into how the criminal justice system could be improved to help victims of sexual assault.
The major recommendations of the VLRC report include:
- better education and training for police, lawyers and judges;
- reducing delays in trials involving children and people with cognitive impairment;
- introducing a specialist list in the Magistrates’ Court for cases involving offences against children to improve the speed and sensitivity of the process;
- reducing the number of times children and people with a cognitive impairment must give their evidence and be cross-examined on it;
- tightening judges’ control of cross-examination and barring the accused from personally questioning the complainant or other vulnerable witnesses;
- making testimony by closed circuit television routine for all complainants;
- allowing testimony of children and people with a cognitive impairment to be recorded before trial to reduce delay and trauma;
- further restricting access to the complainant’s counselling records;
- widening the evidence that juries can hear and who can give it;
- making it illegal for people to “groom” young people for future sexual acts, including through Internet contact;
- the establishment of a working party to improve responses to young sexual offenders; and
- widening the offences which protect people with a cognitive impairment against sexual abuse.
Our People
| 
