Plea for victims as dozens of sex offenders claim miscarriage of justice

Jess McVicar

An advocate is calling for more support and protection for victims as dozens of convicted sex offenders try to have their cases reopened as potential miscarriages of justice.

Jess McVicar, a victim advocate who has spent the past seven years working with the Sensible Sentencing Trust, predicts there will be a "huge rise" in offenders trying to reopen their cases through the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

The government-appointed commission began work in July 2020 to investigate possible miscarriages of justice and has been flooded with applications – 282 by the end of February, far more than it was expecting.

Of those, 125 are from convicted sex offenders. Seventy of them have convictions for sex crimes against adults and 55 for offending against children.

The CCRC can review both convictions and sentences imposed. There is no breakdown available on which are being contested in the sex offenders' cases.

McVicar said the potential impact on the victims was "frightening" if sexual abuse cases were to be reopened.

"If the CCRC agree there has been an injustice in their case, (victims) can go through the entire process again," she said.

"They can ask victims for medical certificates, they can ask victims for a whole lot of stuff from the history of their case, and they might just have been finally getting to move on with their life."

The CCRC has powers to refer cases back to an appeal court if it believes a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. McVicar said that if that happened, "it just unburies everything again" for victims who might be forced to relive events they had been able to shut out.

"Victims should not have to go to a retrial. They shouldn't have to give up their medical information. They shouldn't have to do anything like that," McVicar told Open Justice.

"If the offender is absolutely adamant that they are innocent, then their lawyer needs to do the work without affecting the victims, without even bothering the victim's life."

McVicar said there also needed to be better support for victims if sexual abuse cases were going to be revisited. She said there was not much money for Victim Support, nor enough counselling sessions available for victims.

"They definitely need to up that. They need to put in better support systems behind the victims if the CCRC are going to start taking a lot of these cases on," she said.

The number of convicted sex offenders filing applications with the commission, at 45 per cent of the total number, seems disproportionately high given that fewer than one-quarter of inmates are in prison for sexual offending.

The CCRC's chairman, Colin Carruthers QC, said that the commission was "very much alert to that disparity in the statistics" in regard to the sex offenders coming forward.

"We haven't really got to the bottom of any particular reasons," he said.

"I suppose, without having any scientific basis for this, it's probably a reflection of the denial mentality that we see over and over again with sexual offences," Carruthers said.

National Party courts spokesman Chris Penk said the sexual offending was a "notoriously difficult balancing act" that the justice system and Parliament had to grapple with.

"Deeper reform of the justice system is needed in this space," he said.

"In the meantime, the Government and Criminal Cases Review Commission need to consider whether it is properly equipped to handle this type of case review," Penk said.

"This is a highly specialised area of law and practice. There's a danger that the commission will be unable to handle such matters credibly, bearing in mind the complex issues that always arise in sexual offending cases."