Page 834 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 13 March 1991
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29. An ACT Liberal Administration will explore alternative methods for victims of crime to give evidence before the courts. We realise that improvements in this field are especially important in the case of children who are the victims of crime, and we shall seek the early implementation of video-taped evidence by children in cases where the court deems this action appropriate.
I am delighted to say that I think that in that regard steps have been taken by the Attorney and the Chief Magistrate. Already there have been a number of occasions when videotaped evidence of children has been taken to save them the great trauma they suffer, especially in indecent assault cases and such like, when they give evidence in court. Indeed, in the deliberations of the ACT Community Law Reform Committee the full question of victims and victims' rights is currently being addressed. This is just a further excellent step in that process.
Mr Connolly alluded to the fact that for all too long the victims were the forgotten people in the criminal justice process. Basically, they would be there to give evidence. If it was a serious matter they would give evidence in a committal hearing; they would be cross-examined in many cases because of the adversarial system; and they would be made to look as if they were guilty rather than merely giving evidence on behalf of the community against an accused.
They would then, if it was a serious matter, have to give further evidence on trial. If there was a hung jury they might have to come back for a second trial. It was possible for a victim to be required to give evidence two or three times in a series of court proceedings. Quite often they would not be informed of the progress of a case or of what was happening with the charges. On some occasions in the past they may not have been informed of other relevant factors such as were taken up by this UN Declaration of Victims' Rights.
In the early days when I first started in court, I saw, both in New South Wales and in the ACT, occasions when victims were treated rather badly and were not made to feel as comfortable as they should feel in the adversarial system. I am pleased to say, from my experience as a prosecutor in the ACT courts, that, certainly in recent years, the police and the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which started in 1985, are showing much more concern in this regard and are taking more and more steps to, in fact, implement, as a matter of operational policy, most of the points raised in the UN declaration.
Indeed, most of those points are simply commonsense, but it is important that they are stated. I am pleased to see that Australia in fact was the guiding hand behind the UN adopting such a declaration. As Mr Connolly correctly
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