Call to bar rape accused from cross-examining

The legal loophole which allows people accused of rape to cross-examine their alleged victims should be closed immediately, it was claimed tonight.

The Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI), the umbrella body for 15 rape crisis centres across the State, said it was making a mockery of the legal system.

“We are calling for immediate legislative reforms which will prevent a victim of crimes involving humiliation and degradation, suffering a repeated process of humiliation and degradation by her attacker inside our court rooms,” said legal co-ordinator Kate Mulkerrins.

In a recent case at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, a man accused of rape had cross-examined his alleged victim about the attack.

“This same situation could happen again tomorrow, next week, next month if we do not empower our judges to end this abuse of our courtrooms,” said Ms Mulkerrins.

In Britain, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act was introduced in 1999 to prevent this occurring after two high profile cases.

In one of them, an accused man cross-examined his victim for six days while wearing the same jeans and jumper he had worn at the time of the attack. The woman said afterwards she had been raped once by the man, who was subsequently convicted, and again by the British justice system.

The RCNI has warned that the failure to change the law is deterring rape victims from contacting the Gardaí.

According to its research, only one in ten victims make contact with the Gardaí about their cases and only five out of 100 cases of sexual violence in Ireland ever make it to court.