AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail
Judge’s eyes open to pain – child sex abuse testimony gives commissioner Peter McClellan a sense of victims’ scars
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.
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