A senior judge has criticised the Rape Crisis Centre and urged it to avoid using victim impact reports for campaigning purposes.
Mr Justice Carney, who presides over the Central Criminal Court, said that three recent pronouncements from Rape Crisis Centre (RCC) had given him cause for concern. The first arose in a radio interview, where the director of the centre, Ms Muireann Ní Bhriain SC, condemned the accused having the services of "expensive lawyers".
"This is saying that a person charged with particular crimes should only be entitled to cheap lawyers," said the judge
"This expression is not a million miles away from the expression 'dirty raincoat lawyers' and represents a remarkable position to be taken by someone who herself holds a patent of silk from the Government."
Speaking at a conference on the trial of sexual offences in Dublin at the weekend, organised by the Women Lawyers' Association, Mr Justice Carney said that any person charged with an offence enjoys a presumption of innocence until displaced by a finding of guilt.
Such a person should not be dictated to by anyone as to what level of representation he should be entitled to employ.
He also said good-quality advice is essential to the working of the Central Criminal Court, where 40 per cent of those charged plead guilty following legal advice. Any inhibition on high-quality advice that would force these cases to proceed to trial would result in even longer delays than already exist.
"The next time I heard the director [of the RCC] on the radio she was saying that there was no such thing as a false sexual charge," he said. "This is not the experience of the courts. In relation to the balance of rape cases which are contested there is a majority of acquittals."
Responding to the criticism, Ms Olive Braiden, former director of the RCC, who was present at the conference, said that while she no longer represented the centre she regretted that Mr Justice Carney had chosen to introduce these matters when Ms Ní Bhriain was not there to defend herself.
Ms Breda Allen, chairwoman of the RCC, said the centre would not be able to respond to the criticism until Ms Ní Bhriain returned tomorrow from an overseas trip. Ms Allen noted it was possible Ms Ní Bhriain's comments were "taken out of context or totally misquoted". As to whether the centre believed false allegations were sometimes made, she said: "We leave determination of whether a report is false or not to the State. It is not for us to decide."
Mr Justice Carney said that while an acquittal did not certify an allegation was false, it showed that juries in a high number of cases were not prepared to accept the allegations which the director suggested should be open and shut. He added that the effect on the victim of such an acquittal was devastating.
His third area of concern related to victim impact reports. One he had recently received from a senior counsellor with the RCC stated: "The severity of the sentence imposed will determine the degree to which the victim becomes reconciled with the justice system." Mr Justice Carney pointed out that the victim impact report was a statutory mechanism which ensures that the judge has before him all the relevant facts in order to arrive at an appropriate sentence.
"For the author of a victim impact report to use it for the purpose of campaigning for a particular level of sentence is a serious abuse of process," he said.
He said the centre does excellent work in the caring area, but when they come to interface with the courts through the victim impact report "they must have regard to its statutory purposes and leave campaigning aside".