Missing Women Inquiry recommendation implemented
Posted January 6, 2015 4:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The Crown is now implementing some recommendations made in the Missing Women Inquiry back in 2013. The goal is to streamline the court process and better protect vulnerable women and victims of abuse.
Testifying is already hard enough for victims. “Allowing a witness to testify through a closed circuit system from outside the courtroom, use of a screen to provide some separation between a witness and an accused individual, or have a support person. Those are some of the examples,” explains Neil MacKenzie with the Crown.
The changes also include:
– identifying and assigning prosecution files that require victim and witness support early in the process;
– reducing the number of prosecutors who have conduct of a file over time to ensure continuity of file ownership;
– seeking appropriate protective conditions as part of any bail order;
– actively engaging with vulnerable victims and witnesses through the prosecution to encourage their ongoing participation;
– bringing timely applications for access to the Criminal Code’s various support provisions for victims and witnesses;
– cross sector consultation with other justice system agencies to access support;
– assisting with Victim Impact Statements; and
– seeking appropriate protective conditions as part of any orders made at sentencing.
Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal says this is all spot on. “So you know if we’re going to encourage women to come forward and testify after sexual assaults, the system has to be amendable to that. So that’s really what we’re saying, that we have to be more concerned about vulnerable women so they’ll come forward and testify to prevent more victimization in the future.”
He made the recommendations after learning a woman who was nearly killed by Robert Pickton was never pressed to testify because she was a drug addict. Oppal says the inquiry found that had she been better supported — Pickton may have been prosecuted years earlier.
The woman narrowly escaped Pickton after he attacked her with a knife on his farm in 1997, five years before his arrest for the murders of 26 women.
