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REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ONE-DAY CONFERENCE

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ONE-DAY CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH THE REPORT “THE LEGAL PROCESS AND VICTIMS"

Firstly, I would like to say how delighted I am to be associated with this Conference - and to have been invited to give the opening address at what promises to be a landmark day - not just for those who have taken a keen interest in the treatment of rape victims in our legal and judicial system - but for women generally. Given my former connections with the Trinity Law School – and with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre - it is a particular pleasure for me to be one of three former Reid Professors to be associated with the Report – the others of course being Mary Robinson and Ivana Bacik. So I am grateful indeed to Sally O’Neill, the Project Administrator, for involving me in this conference this morning.

The report, which contains the results of a year long research project - covering the experiences of a number of rape victims in five countries - including Ireland - along with a comparative study of the legal processes in the 15 member states of the European Union - makes compelling reading for anybody who has an interest in how the victims of rape are “handled” in their search for justice. In the process, it highlights how the adversarial systems in Ireland and England present problems for victims who can be subjected to the additional trauma of cross-examination by defence counsel who treat victims more as hostile witnesses rather than as women who have suffered “violation of rights and bodily integrity” which of course puts them into an entirely different category - requiring a different approach.

This raises the central issue of the report - the legal representation of rape victims - and the report sets out a comparative analysis of the extent and type of representation in the different jurisdictions. In the case of Ireland this issue has been considered on a number of occasions in the past - by the Law Reform Commission, the Second Commission on the Status of Women and by the Task Force on Violence against Women. I am aware that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, who will be closing the Conference this evening, has indicated his willingness to move in the direction of legal representation for victims, and to have the issue fully debated.

It is more comfortable to keep on doing things the way you’ve always done them, but this report challenges us to ask “are there better ways of doing it” – and not just to say it in a vacuum – but to say “look, here are other ways it’s done, and here are the experience of people who’ve been through those other systems”. So the value of this report lies in its examination of the differences that exist in the treatment of victims across the European Union - and as such is a particularly welcome contribution to the debate on the law at this time. It puts into stark contrast the different approaches under the two types of jurisdiction - and illustrates those differences in the specific cases that are examined in five member states.

The experiences of Irish participants in the study compared to those from the four other selected member states show clearly how it is the court appearance itself which is the most traumatic part of the process - with the Irish victims relating how their court experiences were negative and traumatic - except in relation to the trial judges whom they rated as having a “more positive attitude towards them”. This contrasts with the experiences of women who had legal representation and who expressed satisfaction with the trial process.

Our legal system is only beginning to get comfortable with taking about the experiences of victims. It is a relatively new phenomenon. In the legal system generally we tend to talk about what actually happened to the victims – and until recent years we haven’t thought to explore what the victims were thinking or feeling. But we have start to see the beginning of a stronger victim consciousness – in, for example, the increasing use of victim impact reports in court. We’ve also seen the role played by victims in the Peace Process in Northern Ireland. So not just in relation to rape – but generally, victims who were previously silenced by practice and procedure are now beginning to fight for space for their voices. The important thing is that once those voices have their space, the dynamics of the debate change – and how we look at what we do changes.

Chapter 4 of the report sets out the recommendations of the participants based on their experiences. This is perhaps one of the most important chapters of the report as it reflects how the victims themselves feel that the systems can be changed to avoid others having to go through the negative aspects of the process that they have endured, and looks at the subject from a human rather that a legal standpoint.

In a comparative study of the different legal processes, where each is examined against the same yardstick, the report looks at the laws, the court practices, the remedies, the statistics and the current state of play in relation to reform of the law. It highlights the differences that exist in laws and court practices - and points to where there is scope to approach reform of the law on a more harmonious basis across the European Union. In its analysis, the report also deals with the question of suitable training for police officers, lawyers and judges in processing rape cases and dealing with the victims of rape.

At the conference today, you will have an opportunity to look more closely at the findings and conclusions of the report – with contributions from its authors and other distinguished speakers from across Europe. I would like to take this opportunity to pay a special tribute to Ivana Bacik, Catherine Maunsell and Susan Gogan who have undertaken this pioneering work – and to the EU Commission’s Grotius Programme, and the Minister and Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform for their financial support. I know that it would not have been possible to produce such a far-reaching study without the co-operation of the victims of rape for whom the process could not have been easy. I commend them for their important contribution in making this such an innovative report and one which brings the whole debate on the legal and judicial environment to a new level.

ENDS