NCJ Number
154123
Date Published
1993
Length
249 pages
Annotation
This volume reviews the impact of legislation enacted in Scotland in 1985 to control the use of evidence regarding the sexual history and sexual character of both male and female victims of sex offenses.
Abstract
The law reform aimed to minimize undue investigation of complainers' sexual lives while continuing to admit all the evidence necessary for justice to be done to the accused. The analysis combined sociolegal analysis and empirical data to describe how the new legislation was operating in the courtroom and to evaluate its success. Data collected over more than 3 years focused on the ways victims are questioned by the prosecution and the defense, verbal evidence from other witnesses, medical and forensic reports, summary statements by prosecutors and defense attorneys, the procedures followed, and comparisons with other jurisdictions. The analysis indicated that the legislation has achieved limited success. Blatant attacks on the complainer's sexual character are rare, and the new procedures created important boundaries between the acceptable and the unacceptable. However, the legislation falls short of achieving the legislators' aims in that the rules are not always followed, the rules do not always achieve their goal of excluding undue intimate and possibly embarrassing questioning, and the legislation does not control subtle character attacks. Several approaches should be considered to address these problems. Figure, index of cases, subject index, appended tables, and 48 references