AUSTRALIA
The West Australian
Annette Blackwell – AAP on May 25, 2016
The findings of a major study into how juries reason in child sexual abuse cases will be launched in Sydney on Wednesday.
The research involved 90 mock trials with more than 1000 potential jurors and was carried out at the behest of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as part of a major criminal justice project.
The commission is exploring why child sexual offences have a significantly lower rate of conviction than criminal offences generally.
As well as reasons such as delayed reporting and the unlikelihood of corroborating witnesses, there is the possibility that an assumption by courts about juries is a factor.
The assumption is that juries will be so disgusted by child sex abuse they will wrongfully convict based on prejudice rather than evidence if joint trials – where there is more than one complainant against a defendant – or the admission of tendency evidence is allowed.
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