Sir, – As a practising counsellor and psychotherapist, I read with interest Fiona Gartland's article "Call for pre-trial hearings on disclosure of notes in sex cases" (December 15th, 2014).
Among the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission, in its report Disclosure and Discovery in Criminal Cases, was that "in a sexual offence case, the court should have regard to the following additional factors: (a) society's interest in encouraging the reporting of sexual offences; (b) society's interest in encouraging the obtaining of treatment by complainants of sexual offences; and (c) the public interest in ensuring that adequate records are kept of counselling communications".
According to your article, the commission's recommendations were made in the context, inter alia, of a recent increase in requests for access to counselling records in sexual offence cases.
While I am not qualified to comment on the legal aspects of the commission’s report, I am concerned at the growing tendency to intrude into the relationship between counsellor and client, in particular, the requirement in the Children First Bill 2014 that counsellors report childhood abuse disclosed by victims who are their adult clients.
This requirement is likely to militate against all three of the commission’s points quoted above.
Together with other practitioners with whom I have discussed this matter, my feeling is that, by discouraging clients from disclosing sexual abuse or from entering counselling in the first place, a requirement for mandatory reporting will operate against the client’s therapeutic needs as well as being counter-productive, from a public policy point of view, in that abuse which might have been disclosed and come voluntarily to the attention of the authorities, as at present, will not now do so.
This is apart from the possible impact on the client of their involvement in the criminal justice system resulting from mandatory reporting by the counsellor, regardless of the consent or otherwise of the client, in circumstances where the client is in a vulnerable and fragile condition.
Hopefully, in considering the question of mandatory reporting by counsellors and psychotherapists, our legislators will take note of the Law Reform Commission report’s recommendations.
Balancing the imperative of protecting children with that of meeting the therapeutic needs of the client/victim is clearly very difficult. Mandatory reporting of their childhood abuse disclosed by adult clients may appear necessary to protect children yet, for the reasons outlined, the appropriate balance may not lie in that direction. – Yours, etc,
IAN WOODS,
Swords,
Co Dublin.