Historic Sexual Abuse Cases - A Guide for Criminal Lawyers

Introduction

Prosecuting and defending in historic sexual abuse cases presents technical challenges and requires the advocate to make often difficult tactical judgements.

This webinar is designed to explain how best to structure an indictment avoiding many of the issues that commonly arise when dealing with the minefield of changes in legislation and sentencing regimes including doli incapax. It will also cover sentencing in historic cases and the approach taken by the courts and what traps to look out for.

This webinar will be a useful guide for criminal lawyers.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• Undated and spanning offences - offences that span the introduction of SOA 2003 and changes in sentencing legislation
• Avoiding overloading an indictment
• Joinder
• Particularising counts
• Dismissal applications
• A comprehensive understanding of the most common pre-SOA 2003 offences and in what circumstances to use them
• The approach taken in sentencing an offender for historic sexual offences with reference to the SCG and R v H and others and R v Forbes, and how s.236A offenders of particular concern and Sch 18A of CJA 2003 impact in historic cases

This webinar was recorded on 22nd March 2019