AUSTRALIA
9 News
AAP
The cross-examination of a boy who was sexually abused by a teacher at a Perth private school was so traumatising other parents were deterred from reporting abuse, his mother says.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been examining how victims fare when they give evidence in the trials of their abusers.
In the first part of a two-part hearing, the commission is exploring how different jurisdictions make judicial decisions on the admission of tendency evidence – that is evidence on an alleged abuser’s likelihood to sexually molest children.
It has heard from survivor witnesses and Crown prosecutors involved in trials in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia that when judges rule tendency and coincidence evidence is not admissible, an abuse victim can end up being the only complainant in a separate trial.
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