While women wait… (2)

Can specialist sexual offences courts
and centres reducesecondary victimisation?

Attempts to address the secondary victimisation of rape survivors have generally involved the following: changes to legislation relevant to sexual offences; the introduction of multi-disciplinary approaches or specialised units; training programmes; and the introduction of written guidelines or codes of conduct. However, experience has shown that these initiatives, if they are to live up to expectations, require solid and ongoing support in the form of a budget, personnel, infrastructure and resources. This is clearly illustrated by a look at the specialist sexual offences courts currently being established around the country (see Crime Index Volume 4 Number 2 2000), and also at a recent innovation: multi-disciplinary care centres.

Secondary victimisation is typically described as the ill-informed, insensitive, blaming treatment of rape survivors by members of the criminal justice system and the victim’s family, friends or community. Examples of such victimisation include:

Disbelief and insensitive treatment of women laying sexual assault charges.



Discouraging or preventing women from laying charges.



Failure to provide private waiting or report-taking facilities



Failure to provide women with information on procedures; not explaining why certain questions are being asked or procedures followed, and not updating women on the progress of the investigation or trial.



Using biased criteria in deciding whether or not to prosecute or close cases, or declare them unfounded.



Long waiting periods for victims before they are examined and treated, as well as between reporting an incident and appearing in court.



Failure to object to inappropriate cross-questioning in court, or to certain sentences.

This treatment not only compounds the initial rape trauma, but may also lead to women subsequently withdrawing charges. Fear of such blaming treatment may even stop women from laying charges in the first place. These are the problems specialist facilities intend to address.

Sexual offences courts

The first pilot specialist sexual offences court was established in Wynberg, Cape Town, in 1993. Seven years went by before this court was duplicated elsewhere (although, unofficially, individual prosecutors in other cities had been attempting to transform their courts into specialist facilities during this same period). By the end of 2000 courts were established in the following centres:

Bloemfontein (2 courts)

Durban

Grahamstown

Johannesburg

Kimberley

Mdantsane

Parow

Port Elizabeth

Pretoria

Protea, Soweto (4 courts)

Welkom

Wynberg (4 courts)

Over the past year a total of 375 people, including police officers, social workers and prosecutors — even magistrates in some instances — have received training to coincide with the opening of the sexual offences courts.

In 2001 further courts are planned for Butterworth, George, Mitchell’s Plain, Mmabatho, Paarl, Pietermaritzburg, Thohoyandou, Umlazi, Umtata, Verulam, Vosloorus, and Zwelitsha.

Ideally sexual offences courts should consist of at least one court devoted to hearing such cases, separate waiting rooms and the allocation of two prosecutors per court. The presence of two prosecutors is particularly important. While one prosecutor is proceeding with particular trials, it allows the other to consult with and prepare rape survivors for court.

In practice, however, these standards are not always met. Insufficient space at some courts means that neither court rooms nor waiting rooms can be set aside specifically for rape matters. There are not enough trained intermediaries, prosecutors and magistrates to staff the courts, a problem further aggravated by high staff turnover. Thus the effects of training are lost if the courses are not regularly repeated.

Thuthuzela and multi-disciplinary care centres

Thuthuzela is based at the GF Jooste Hospital in Manenberg, Cape Town, and is a further development in services to rape survivors. Opened on June 8th 2000 by the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions, it aims to improve the investigation and prosecution of rape cases as well as provide better services to rape survivors.

What sets Thuthuzela apart from other one-stop centres and the victim empowerment centres established at health facilities and police stations, is the range of service providers involved. Those forming part of Thuthuzela’s multi-disciplinary team include police investigators, medical personnel, community volunteers, social workers and prosecutors. The inclusion of prosecutors reflects the attempt to shift investigations from being police-driven to being prosecutor-driven. Ideally, all cases should be discussed by the investigating officer and the prosecutor as soon as they are reported. At Thuthuzela prosecutors are available to investigating officers on a 24-hour basis.

Members of the multi-disciplinary team, or implementation committee, meet every two weeks to monitor the running of the Centre and to iron out any problems.

Centres based on the Thuthuzela model are planned for Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, St Barnabas Hospital, Ntlaza, in the Transkei, Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, Tshilididzini Regional Hospital and Donald Fraser Hospital in Thohoyandou.

Do specialist centres make a difference?

Thuthuzela has succeeded in significantly cutting down at least one wait experienced by rape survivors, with no woman waiting more than half-an-hour to be examined by medical personnel. The fact that the establishment of the specialist courts has been accompanied by training has also contributed to an increase in knowledge and skills in this area.

However, it remains difficult to assess the impact of these specialist facilities because they have not been provided with adequate personnel and resources to enable them to function as planned. For example, at one point two of the four Wynberg sexual offences courts were not in operation, as too few magistrates were available. The freezing of police posts has also left one investigating officer handling all the rape cases currently reported at Gugulethu police station.

Over and above making some personnel available for these initiatives, government funding of these facilities has been minimal. The establishment of the centres at Thohoyandou and Ntlaza can only go ahead with donor funding. All the training in support of the establishment of the sexual offences courts is currently funded by international donors such as the Canadian High Commission. No funding is available for the kind of ongoing training required for skills development and to deal with staff turnover.

All too often, secondary victimisation is explained as the outcome of discriminatory, ill-informed attitudes towards rape survivors that can be remedied by training that corrects such attitudes. This approach cannot adequately address such a complex problem. The creation of meaningful and effective specialist services is impossible within the broader context of an over-burdened, under-resourced criminal justice system. Given the constraints a lack of resources places on over-burdened people, some cases will inevitably be prioritised over others, and waits will occur. Underpaid people working on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week, will eventually burn out, which may translate into the short-tempered treatment of rape survivors. In this way secondary victimisation becomes inherent in the criminal justice system.

Training and specialist services are important. But it is equally important that sufficient personnel, adequate infrastructure (such as court space) and other resources (like cars) are adequately budgeted for. If not, we create limited services that raise expectations but only occasionally provide justice to some, rather than justice for all.

Lisa Vetten
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Source documents

Stanton, S, Lochrenberg, M and Mukasa V (1997). Improved Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault?

Vetten, Lisa and Bhana, Kailash (forthcoming). The Significance of Context in Understanding the Secondary Victimisation of Rape Survivors: A Preliminary Report.

Interviews

Advocate Bronwyn Pithey, Sexual Offences and Community Affairs Unit, National Directorate of Public Prosecutions

Advocate Pierre Smith, Sexual Offences and Community Affairs Unit, National Directorate of Public Prosecutions