Sexual Trauma and Abuse: Restorative and Transformative Possibilities?
Executive Summary
At the time of the National Commission on Restorative Justice reported in 2009, it said “While no offence should in principle be excluded from the restorative process, certain serious offences such as sexual assaults should be excluded from the initial phases of implementation” (NCRJ2009, p. 81). The evidence from the research presented in this study indicates that this cautious approach to Restorative Justice in sexual crime is now no longer appropriate.
Based on the international literature examined, the international programmes contacted during the course of this study, and (most importantly) the views of 30 victims of sexual crime, 23 sexual offenders and a total of 149 research participants, a number of important issues became apparent:
• Victims and offenders of sexual crime experience unacceptable and at times debilitating delays in the administration of justice in Ireland.
• Information gaps and deficits regarding the processing of their cases through the criminal justice system added to the trauma for victims of sexual crime who felt peripheral to the criminal proceedings.
• The current adversarial justice system and punitive approaches taken in public social life towards convicted sexual offenders often results in offenders being willing to deny responsibility for their sexual offences and take the risk of forcing the State to prove the case against them.
• Victims of sexual crime experience unacceptable delays in the administration of civil justice mechanisms for redress in Ireland, which are also costly and adversarial.
• All cohorts of participants in this study report significant gaps in current justice provision for victims of sexual crime in Ireland.
• All cohorts of participants in this study see the need for additional justice mechanisms for victims of sexual crime, including for Restorative Justice.
Read more about the research findings presented at the launch of the report in December 2014 here