Minister Shatter,

This petition is in response to a recent case that came before Justice Paul Carney in the Irish Central Criminal Court.

The case was of a young woman who alleged she was gang-raped in an exceptionally violent manner while 3 months pregnant. The allegations included rape and false imprisonment – the woman claimed she had been raped repeatedly, had vodka poured on her face, been urinated on, and locked in a wardrobe.

One would like to hope that anyone who had, even possibly, undergone such trauma would be treated sensitively by the court system in order to ensure they could continue with legal proceedings. Not so in Ireland. Justice Paul Carney forced the victim to physically stand before her attackers in court in order to identify them individually, which is not common practice for obvious reasons.

The victim was so visibly terrified by this ordeal that barristers participating in the trial voiced opinions that she was about to collapse.

The day after this ordeal, the victim left a note for her partner stating that she was too terrified to attend court again – when police tracked her down that day, she was rushed to hospital immediately, having attempted suicide via an overdose of sleeping pills.

Instead of recognising the genuine nature of this woman’s distress, Judge Carney issued a warrant for her arrest, and following her release from hospital she – a highly-traumatised alleged victim of rape and mother of an infant child – was imprisoned. Justice Carney is quoted as saying;

"If she has to spend a long time in prison herself waiting for a re-trial that's her fault"

The accused were later acquitted by a jury after a two-week trial.

We, the undersigned, are using this petition to send you a message.

We disagree with Justice Carney – this woman’s trauma is NOT her fault. She was dealt with in the most abhorrent manner possible by the courts, and her response – given her clearly tenuous emotional state – is actually entirely reasonable.
It is NOT satisfactory for judges to publicly blame the victims, alleged OR established, of sexual violence, for their response to incredible trauma.

Presumption of innocence should not, and CANNOT, come at the expense of victim’s psychological well-being. The justice system is inherently dysfunctional if justice cannot be achieved without re-traumatising victims. In cases of alleged child sex abuse, innocence is still presumed, and the truthfulness of the allegations cannot be established before a proper trial any more than in cases of sexual abuse in adulthood. The victims, however, are treated with far greater sensitivity and respect – they are certainly not forced to stand feet away from their attackers in a courtroom, look them in the eyes, and identify them. Nor are they imprisoned in the event of being too afraid to testify.

Why? Because as both children, and potential victims, we assume a level of emotional and psychological vulnerability in these situations – and rightly so. However, these principles need to be applied equally to victims of sexual violence in adulthood. According to the 2002 SAVI report conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), victims such as this woman of attempted or actual penetrative assault are 8 times more likely to have been an inpatient of a psychiatric hospital, than the national average.

We, the undersigned, believe that Ireland HAS to do something to rectify this situation, and we demand immediate action. We the people deserve more from our justice system, and furthermore – we demand it. We want to see a review of the aforementioned case, as well as the manner in which sexual violence is handled by the Irish legal system in general. Justice Carney, in particular, has a long history of mishandling sensitive cases, and it has gone on quite long enough. This is an absolute disgrace, and we WILL NOT stand for it.

This issue is important to us, Mr. Shatter, and as such it must be important to you.