Rape Crisis Centre says rulings must not deter anyone from taking cases

The Supreme Court's rulings that two separate sexual abuse cases should not proceed because of the risk of an unfair trial would be "very disappointing" to the many victims of abuse, the director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said last night.

Ms Olive Braiden said it was important the ruling did not act as a deterrent to those considering taking cases.

"Every right-minded person would want an accused party to have a fair trial, but I would hope that victims of abuse will still be encouraged to take cases, even if they have to go to the Supreme Court to test them." This would be especially important in the wake of the Laffoy inquiry into child abuse, she added.

"We have seen again and again that it's part of the healing process for victims to bring their abusers to justice - that the healing often only starts after they make statements to the police."

Asked if she thought the Supreme Court was attempting to redress a perceived imbalance in abuse cases against the defendant's right to a fair trial, she said there was no justification for such a perception. "If there's an imbalance, it's in favour of the abuser. There are thousands of people who have been abused and never brought cases."

One legal source said the significance of the rulings was that that they were the first cases of the Supreme Court intervening to halt a sexual abuse trial. "In all other cases, they have refused to intervene, or have overturned decisions by the High Court to stop trials of this nature."

The rulings would be an encouragement to people facing such charges, the source said, since the claim of specific prejudice through lapse of time was common in abuse cases.

"Virtually all these people claim particular prejudice," he said, adding that the detail of the rulings would be studied to see if they represented only an interpretation of fundamental principles in the light of the two cases involved, "or a change in the principles".

The comments by Mr Justice Hardiman on the need for caution in dealing with psychological evidence, in particular the concept of repressed memory, were interesting because his was "a new judicial voice", he added.

A second legal source said the rulings appeared to be an attempt to safeguard basic legal rights, rather than representing a policy change, "although that might be naive". There was a "burgeoning case law" on the issue of delay in recent years, she said, as the trickle of abuse cases in the late 1980s became a "river" in the 1990s.

Delay was a difficulty in most abuse cases, the source added, "but we're going to have exactly the same problem with the Laffoy commission, and it makes you wonder how they can deal with it there".