AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
Joanne McCarthy
17 Mar 2017
BROAD changes to the way Australian courts deal with child sexual abuse cases are being considered after evidence that traditionally low child sex conviction rates have fallen further since the child abuse royal commission was established in 2012, and entrenched barriers in the criminal justice system against sexual assault victims remain.
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse chair Justice Peter McClellan will tell a lawyers conference on Friday that many of the most commonly held assumptions about child sexual abuse and sexual assault, and the criminal justice processes that have developed because of those assumptions, are not borne out by evidence.
“It appears that, although many more complainants are coming forward, the chances of an offender being acquitted have risen rather than fallen,” Justice McClellan will tell the Australian Lawyers Alliance NSW state conference, in a speech titled “Seeking ‘justice for victims’.”
“The question… is why do the outcomes for sexual assault differ so markedly from the outcomes for other crimes?”
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