Judge's Eyes Open to Pain - Child Sex Abuse Testimony Gives Commissioner Peter McClellan a Sense of Victims' Scars

Courier Mail
September 19, 2013

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/judge8217s-eyes-open-to-pain-child-sex-abuse-tesimony-goves-commissioner-peter-mcclellan-a-sense-of-victims8217-scars/story-fnii5s41-1226722400990

Chair of the Commission, Justice Peter McClellan.

ONE of the state's most senior judges who has been chosen to preside over the child sexual abuse royal commission has never sat on a sexual assault trial or heard the evidence of a rape victim.

Royal commissioner Peter McClellan once banned a prosecutor from a gang rape trial because she showed empathy for the victim and had given a lecture about the case.

Justice McClellan, who this week said that he had not appreciated how devastating sexual assault was to a victim, had slammed senior crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen's public show of support for the 17-year-old who had been raped 25 times by 14 men in four locations over six hours.

As they walked from court after the guilty verdict, Ms Cunneen SC told the waiting media: "I commend the quality of the police investigation and the fortitude of the victim."

In a joint judgment, Justice McClellan and his fellow judges on the Court of Criminal Appeal, Justice Virginia Bell and Justice Cliff Heoben, said a prosecutor had to be impartial.

They quashed the man's conviction but banned Ms Cunneen from prosecuting the retrial despite being told the victim would not give evidence again without her support.

The man, known as MG, was acquitted at the retrial after the witness, known as Miss C, was too distressed to give evidence. Her previous evidence was read to the jury, who did not know that he was already serving at least 15 years in prison for his role in two other gang rapes along with Bilal Skaf and others.

In his opening statement at the commission on Monday, Justice McClellan said: "In my role as a judge I have been called upon to review many of the sentences imposed upon people convicted of the sexual abuse of children but I readily acknowledge that until I began my work with the commission, I did not adequately appreciate the devastating and long lasting affect which sexual abuse however inflicted can have on an individual's life."

The case of MG was one of the notorious gang rapes in 2000.

Justice McClellan also sat on appeal courts that reduced MG's sentence - after his acquittal on his retrial - and the sentences of brother rapists Bilal and Mohammed Skaf for back-to-back pack rapes.

Ms Cunneen, whose support for Miss C outside the court and lecture to law students at Newcastle University also brought criticism from other judges, went on to be appointed a Senior Counsel and is currently the commissioner on a parallel inquiry to that being conducted by Justice McClellan.

She is investigating the handling of child sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.

Justice McClellan declined to comment when approached yesterday by The Daily Telegraph.