European proposals aim to support victims of crime

THE pleas of a mother for greater help for victims of crime across the EU has received a positive response in Brussels.

Maggie Hughes’s 29-year-old son Robbie was beaten into a coma on holiday in Crete three years ago.

His mother told of the trauma of trying to get help for her son, coping with a foreign language, different rules and laws and poor hospitals.

“Suddenly we found ourselves caught up in an urgent and tragic nightmare, in a country we didn’t know and a language we didn’t understand,” she said.

Just trying to communicate with doctors about Robbie’s condition was a nightmare. “Our experience has shown there is an imbalance between rights and support for the accused and for the victim, and perversely, the victim receives little or no support,” she said.

Every year there are 75 million victims of crime in the EU, Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said launching proposals for a comprehensive system of support for victims.

According to the International Crime Victims’ Survey the country with the best structure is Britain, where 36% of victims who wanted support got it.

Ireland is in the middle tier. Fewer than a quarter of those who needed help received it. The worst countries are Greece, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Italy and Germany, according to the survey.

“In most member states the focus is on prevention and I was shocked to learn that victims are not taken into account in so many instances. They tend to disappear — crimes happen every day where it seems the victim has no rights,” said Ms Reding.

She wants every country to have minimum standards for victims — both visitors and nationals— where they are treated with respect by the police and legal system, understand their rights and their case, are helped to attend the trial and where children or victims of rape receive protection while the investigation and court proceedings are under way. The proposals will have to be agreed to by the member states and the European Parliament before becoming law.

Robbie was due to be married this year and had a promising career as a footballer. “Thankfully Robbie has survived, but my son is now a different Robbie. He suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder which he and we, as his family, continue to cope with along with the daily challenges this brings,” Ms Hughes told the Commissioner in a letter asking for help earlier this year.

Robbie has no memory of his former football skills or his clubs or team mates, but he hopes to play for the England football team in the Paralympics in London next year.

“When Robbie walks out onto the pitch in the Olympic stadium in 2012,I would like to know in my heart that real progress has been made to prevent other people going through the same awful experiences that we had because there were insufficient provisions and structures to support victims of crime,” she told Ms Reding.