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Putting Trials on Trial: Sexual Assault and the Failure of the Legal Profession

Putting Trials on Trial: Sexual Assault and the Failure of the Legal Profession

Author: Elaine Craig
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN: 9780228006534
Published In: January 2021
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: Canada ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

HKD 398.87

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Description
Contents

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An interrogation of sexual assault law and a legal process that traumatizes complainants.

Less than one percent of the sexual assaults that occur each year in Canada result in legal sanction for those who commit these offences. Survivors often distrust and fear the criminal justice process, and as a result, over ninety percent of sexual assaults go unreported. Unfortunately, their fears are well founded.

In this thorough evaluation of the legal culture and courtroom practices prevalent in sexual assault prosecutions, Elaine Craig provides an even-handed account of the ways in which the legal profession unnecessarily - and sometimes unlawfully - contributes to the trauma and re-victimization experienced by those who testify as sexual assault complainants. Gathering conclusive evidence from interviews with experienced lawyers across Canada, reported case law, lawyer memoirs, recent trial transcripts, and defence lawyers' public statements and commercial advertisements, Putting Trials on Trial demonstrates that - despite prominent contestations - complainants are regularly subjected to abusive, humiliating, and discriminatory treatment when they turn to the law to respond to sexual violations.

In pursuit of trial practices that are less harmful to sexual assault complainants as well as survivors of sexual violence more broadly, Putting Trials on Trial makes serious, substantiated, and necessary claims about the ethical and cultural failures of the Canadian legal profession.

1. Sexual Assault and the Legal Profession

2. Pendulum Swings and Matriarchal Justice: Debunking Defence Counsel Myths

3. A Kinder and Gentler Approach? Interrogating the Heroes of the Defence Bar

4. The Sexual Assault Lawyer’s Justice Project

5. The Role of the Crown in Sexual Assault Trials

6. Judging Sexual Assault Trials

7. Judicial Error in Sexual Assault Cases

8. We Owe a Responsibility

Notes

Index