Sexual abuse allegations The Australian 14 March 2006

WRITTEN TUESDAY MARCH 14. NOT RUN.
John Stapleton

ONLY eight per cent of allegations of sexual abuse involving children and 10 per cent involving adults result in a sexual offence being proven in court, according to a report released yesterday.

The study, titled ``The attrition of sexual offences from the NSW criminal justice system'', from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, was designed to look at why comparatively few sexual abuse allegations were leading to convictions or jail for the alleged offenders.

Author Jacqueline Fitzgerald said six months after the reporting of an alleged sexual assault only 15 per cent of sexual offence incidents involving a child victim and 19 per cent of incidents involving an adult victim reported to police had resulted in the initiation of criminal proceedings.

Of the people who had criminal proceedings commenced against them, less than half ended up convicted.

Ms Fitzgerald said regardless of the public perception that there was a large number of false sexual abuse allegations, there were serious questions about the criminal justice system's ability to handle these types of cases.

``The primary problem is caught up in the nature of sexual offences,'' she said. ``There is no physical evidence. We are reliant on victim testimony as the basis for prosecution. That means cases where the victim is unwilling to proceed have very low prospect of success in court.''

Ms Fitzgerald wrote that every effort needs to be made to strengthen cases at the investigation stage by the comprehensive gathering of evidence and the support of victims in order to improve the response of the criminal justice system to sexual assault. ``We need victims to participate,'' she said.

Ms Fitzgerald said cases were more likely to proceed to court if the victim was female and aged over ten years, due in part to the perception in the criminal justice system that children made unreliable witnesses.

Commenting on the findings, the director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics Don Weatherburn said there was no solid evidence on the level of false allegations, but it was equally plausible that people did not want to proceed with sexual abuse allegations because of the trauma of court proceedings as the assumption that the allegations were false.

``The best way to reduce the stress associated with the prosecution and court process is to provide victims of seuxal assault with emotional support and encouragement from the moment when they first report the offence to police through to the end of the proseuction process,'' he said.