David Burrows explores how courts strive to balance the search for justice with protecting vulnerable witnesses
While a response is awaited from the Family Procedure Rules Committee on a variety of recommendations on how the family courts might improve the lot of vulnerable witnesses and children, judges have been gradually improving the law to recognise the rights and needs of victims of abuse and child witnesses. The decisions considered here will improve the position of some vulnerable individuals in family proceedings. Meanwhile rule-makers still fail to act on the Report of the Vulnerable Witnesses & Children Working Group, February 2015. Draft amendment rules were published in August 2015, many of whose provisions already exist for children in criminal proceedings following the introduction of Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
Evidence in family proceedings
In Re S (Children) [2016] EWCA Civ 83, [2016] All ER (D) 148 (Feb) the Court of Appeal looked at whether a child, K, who had alleged serious sexual abuse by her brother, B, since she was six, should
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