The Director of Public Prosecutions, James Hamilton has revealed he plans to offer explanations within the next year to complainants in rape and sexual assault cases when his office decides not to bring a prosecution.
Mr Hamilton today said he hopes to begin expanding the pilot programme explaining the reasons for non-prosecutions which was introduced in 2008 for homicide and fatal road traffic and workplace accidents to include rape, sexual assault and serious assaults.
"I would like to extend the pilot programme and I know from talking to victims organisations that the big area they want to see us deal with is sexual offences – rape and sexual assault - and I hope we will be able to do that in the not too distant future," he said.
"Serious assault is another area that I think one would want to move to as well, in fact any offence involving personal violence - there are probably the most important from the victim's point of view and the general public's point of view," he said.
Under the pilot programme introduced by Mr Hamilton in 2008 which looked at homicides and other cases involving a fatality, the DPP's office has offered explanations to the family of the deceased where a decision was taken not to bring a prosecution.
Explanations have been offered in around a dozen such cases to date and while the number was "surprisingly small", it may be due to the fact that sometimes the reason is obvious as in single vehicle road crashes where the driver is killed and no one can be prosecuted, he said.
Mr Hamilton also suggested a need for further legislative study on the issue of whether a victim's previous sexual history should be admitted in evidence as it appeared that the threshold for a defendant seeking to have such evidence admitted was very low.
He pointed out that under Section 4A of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1981, inserted by Section 34 of the Sex Offenders Act 2001, an accused person can apply for leave to adduce evidence of the complainant's prior sexual history.
The DPP's office had reviewed the files in 59 rapes in the period 2002 to 2009 in which the Legal Aid Board had confirmed that applications had been made by defendants to examine a witness on their previous sexual history and some 40 cases of these ultimately went to trial.
Of these 40 cases, applications were granted in 28 or 70 per cent to allow the complainant's previous sexual history be introduced while applications were refused in just four cases or 10 per cent of cases and it was difficult to see any legislative solution without further study, he said
