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Sexual Offences - Final Report Summary

The Sexual Offences: Final Report was tabled in parliament on 25 August 2004. This summary provides a concise, plain English account of the commission's recommendations.

The report recommends:

• better education and training for police, lawyers and judges
• improved police responses to all complainants, but particularly Indigenous and NESB people, children, and people with a cognitive impairment
• reducing the time taken to get to trial for children and people with a cognitive impairment
• introducing a specialist approach to the listing of sexual offence cases in the Magistrates’ Court
• reducing the number of times children and people with a cognitive impairment must give the same evidence
• tightening cross-examination regulations and barring the accused from questioning the complainant or other vulnerable witnesses in person
• making testimony by closed-circuit television routine and allowing videotaped testimony for children and people with a cognitive impairment
• restricting access to the complainant’s counselling records
• widening the definition of allowable evidence and who can give it
• the establishment of a working party to examine potential responses to young sexual offenders.

The summary can be downloaded below. For a hard copy contact the commission on (03) 8619 8619 or by emailing law.reform@lawreform.vic.gov.au. Postage is free within Victoria. 

 

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Author:	Victorian Law Reform Commission
Place of Publication:	Melbourne
Publisher:	Victorian Law Reform Commission
Date of Publication:	August 2004
Number of Pages:	529
Copyright:	Victorian Law Reform Commission, 2004