SARP reforms

The SARP (sexual assault reform program) continues and my Office remains actively involved.

During the reporting period the Assembly passed a number of amendments to the SARP legislation including:

• extending the definition of sexual intercourse to include common sexual acts that are covered in other jurisdictions
• making it an offence for a person to engage in sexual acts with a young person under 18 if the young person is under the person’s special care. This is defined to include school teachers, step parents, foster carers, employers, those providing religious instruction, coaches, counsellors, health professionals and custodial officers. The list is non exhaustive
• reforms to how children and intellectually impaired witnesses can give evidence. Police interviews can now be used as the evidence-in-chief for all child witnesses, and witnesses who are intellectually impaired, where the matter being heard is a violent or sexual offence proceeding. Prior to this amendment this measure was only available to child or intellectually impaired complainants
• recording the evidence of all sexual offence victims to permit the evidence to be played at a retrial. This will ensure victims of sexual offences no longer have to give evidence on more than one occasion if there is a retrial.

It is timely to consider the changes brought about by the introduction of the original SARP provisions in 2009. Since then prosecutors have been able to use police interviews as the evidence-in-chief of the child or intellectually impaired victims. This is one of the most significant achievements of SARP, and has led to the prosecution of more child sex offences. No longer does a child have to recall in detail events that occurred two to three years previously. The detail of what occurred is contained in the interview they participate in shortly after police become aware of an allegation. While the child is still cross examined, the jury can see how the child appeared when first being interviewed by the police. This saves the child having to repeat what occurred on numerous occasions.

One of the other major SARP reforms was to allow child witnesses in sexual offence matters to give evidence prior to the trial. This evidence is recorded and played at the trial which may take place some months later. This allows the child to move on with their life and put the stress of having to give evidence behind them. This facility is available for some other victims of sexual assault if the court has evidence of distress to the victim. Ideally, this provision should be available to sexual assault victims generally without the need for having to prove distress. While such a change has resource implications, the benefits are obvious.

The CCTV provisions which allow for victims of family violence offences, sexual offences, and serious violent offences to give evidence from another room connected to the court by audio visual link have been of enormous benefit to hundreds of victims. As I indicated in last year’s report I support these provisions being extended to victims of burglaries (especially those who are present during the burglary), victims of stalking, and victims of breaches of protection orders. It is anomalous that victims of such offences are not permitted to give evidence by CCTV. Victims of stranger stalking (or indeed stalking by an acquaintance) are not surprisingly, often highly