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Putting Trials on Trial: Sexual Assault and the Failure of the Legal Profession
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.
Book Details
- Publisher: Mqup
- Publish Date: Jan 15th, 2021
- Pages: 320
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.90in - 1.05lb
- EAN: 9780228006534
- Categories: • Criminal Law - General• Sexual Abuse & Harassment• Women's Studies
About the Author
Elaine Craig is associate professor in the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.
Praise for this book
"Putting Trials on Trial is a riveting exposé of criminal defence lawyers who regularly engage in aggressive and humiliating cross-examination, of Crown attorneys who fail to meet their duties to complainants, and of judges who fail to intervene to prevent abusive cross-examination and who fail to properly apply substantive law. It is a must-read for those who seek to change the way that sexual assault law is practised and adjudicated." The Honourable Marie Corbett, author of January: A Woman Judge's Season of Disillusion
"Elaine Craig offers a compelling, timely, and empirically rigorous indictment of Canadian legal professionals for their collective failure to act lawfully and ethically towards complainants in sexual assault cases." Canadian Journal of Law and Society
"This spectacular, thoughtful, and hard-hitting book pushes all of us to reconsider the impact of trials on those caught up in the justice system. Elaine Craig has done us all a service. This is the most important book you'll see this year." Clayton Ruby, lawyer, activist, and member of the Order of Canada
"A damning account of what goes on in Canadian courtrooms, filled with outrageous examples of misconduct by legal professionals, including judges, prosecutors, and defence lawyers. Craig has proven in this book what many women knew to be true already: sexual-assault trials are hellish, traumatizing experiences, and the fair dispensation of justice, in a society still steeped in a mistrust of women and women's sexuality, is unlikely." The Walrus
"Besieged pursues its objectives vigorously and imaginatively. Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson not only arrange and categorize a wide array of siege drama, verse, and prose works; they evaluate them carefully, highlighting the best and robustly criticizing the weaker ones. Scholars owe a debt of gratitude to these two authors for working this rich vein of literary and historical documents." William W.E. Slights, University of Saskatchewan