Page 2669 - Week 07 - Thursday, 3 July 2008
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these witnesses. The bill acknowledges the deficit these witnesses suffer in being able to communicate in unusual environments like a courtroom and makes it easier for them to give their evidence as well as providing a better balance of fairness between the accused and these witnesses.
I now turn to the detail of the bill. Amendments made by the bill to the Magistrates Court Act 1930 are twofold. Firstly, they will permit the admission of a transcript of an audio or visual recording of an interview between police and children or adults with an intellectual impairment as their evidence at a committal proceeding. These amendments will reduce the number of times these witnesses are required to give evidence throughout the criminal justice process and help mitigate the problems that result from inconsistencies and omissions which are unavoidable when a child is forced to recount their story repeatedly. They will also alleviate similar difficulties which can be faced by the intellectually impaired. The defence will be provided with a copy of the transcript and will be able to hear and view the recording in order to prepare its case.
Secondly, amendments to the Magistrates Court Act 1930 will also prohibit absolutely the calling and cross-examination of alleged children or adult victims of sexual offences at a committal hearing. A written statement or a transcript of a police interview will be admissible as their evidence, and they will not be required to attend the committal proceeding to give alternative evidence or be cross-examined on their evidence. Cross-examination of alleged victims at committal, which is often more rigorous and intimidating in the absence of a jury, leads many alleged victims to seek to have the proceedings discontinued for fear of having to go through additional trauma and humiliation at trial.
Amendments to the Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1991 will allow the admissibility in court of a prerecorded audiovisual recording of an interview between police and a child, or an adult with an intellectual impairment who are complainants in sexual and violent offence proceedings as their evidence at trial. The defence will be provided with a copy of the transcript of the recording and will be able to hear and view the recording in order to prepare its case.
Children or adults with an intellectual impairment who are complainants in sexual offence proceedings will also be able to give their evidence at a pre-trial hearing which will be held as soon as possible after a committal proceeding and before the actual trial is held. The prerecording of evidence at a pre-trial hearing aims to redress fundamental problems with the criminal justice system and how it deals with children’s evidence. Delays in the court process are inevitable, but they work against children’s ability to recount events long after they occur. For young children and people with a disability, the ability to give cogent evidence many months or years after the event might be beyond their developmental and intellectual capacity, despite the fact that they were able to give coherent descriptions at a time closer to the events in question.
A pre-trial hearing is a unique pre-trial process designed to shield alleged victims of sexual offences from further trauma in having to repeat their evidence again in open court proceedings. The pre-trial hearing allows the victim to give their evidence
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