Additional Resources: Improving the Justice System Response to Sexual Offences
This is a page of extra material relevant to the issues discussed in the VLRC’s report, Improving the Justice System Response to Sexual Offences (2021). It is intended to assist researchers, students, legal professionals and other readers with an interest in the issues.
Below you will find the government’s response to our report, information about legislative amendments that implemented some of our recommendations, and links to some materials that we found particularly useful when we were drafting the report. This is not a list of everything we used. For a comprehensive list of the resources we referred to in our report, see the Bibliography.
Below you will also find links to recent data and statistics on sexual offences; related inquiries that were running at the same time as our inquiry or that have started since our inquiry finished; support services; and selected media coverage of our report.
- The government’s response
- Legislation implementing some of our recommendations
- Data and statistics
- Other inquiries
- Support services for victim survivors
- Media coverage
The government’s response to our report
‘Stronger laws for victim survivors of sexual violence’, Victorian Government media release, 12 November 2021
Legislation implementing some of our recommendations
The Justice Legislation Amendment (Sexual Offences and Other Matters) Act 2022 implemented 13 of the report’s 99 recommendations. It:
- Reformed the Crimes Act 1958 to introduce an affirmative model of consent and to criminalise stealthing (Recommendations 50 & 51).
- Made image-based sexual offences indictable and moved them into the Crimes Act (Recommendations 52, 53, 54).
- Amended the Jury Directions Act 2015 to improve judges’ directions to juries in sexual offence trials by requiring judges to explain the meaning of the phrase ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’; address misconceptions jurors may hold about sexual violence where there are good reasons to address those misconceptions; and give directions earlier and more frequently (Recommendations 78, 79, 82).
- Amended the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 so that ‘ground rules hearings’ are held in all cases where a sexual offence complainant is a witness. This means that the judge, prosecution and defence must consider the communication and other needs of the complainant, and agree on the style, parameters and scope of questioning before the complainant is called to give evidence (Recommendation 84).
- Amended the Criminal Procedure Act to modernise its language and remove references to ‘chastity’ (Recommendation 89).
The Act also implemented recommendations from earlier VLRC reports:
- By requiring the court to have regard to additional considerations when determining whether to allow pre-trial cross-examination of a witness who has a cognitive impairment or is a complainant in a proceeding that relates to a charge for a sexual or family violence offence (Recommendations 45 and 46 of the Committals report, reiterated in the Sexual Offences report). Magistrates will also need to provide reasons for granting leave to cross-examine a witness and identify each issue on which the witness may be cross-examined (Recommendation 46, Committals report).
- By extending the confidential communications protections in criminal proceedings to ‘protected health information’ (Recommendations 25 and 44 of the The Role of Victims of Crime in the Criminal Trial Process report).
Data and statistics
In Chapter 6 of our report, we made recommendations for how to improve the collection of data about sexual offences.
We relied on various data sources to develop our recommendations. Appendix D of the report provides an overview of the Victorian criminal justice system data we drew on.
Other important sources included:
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Cth), Sexual Assault in Australia (In Focus Report, 28 August 2020) This report draws together a range of data sources to provide a national summary of the extent, nature and impact of sexual assault.
- ABC Online: ‘Rough justice: how police are failing survivors of sexual assault’ (3 February 2020). The data reveal the outcome of nearly every sexual assault reported to police in Australia between 2008 and 2017. The figures include previously unseen data on reports rejected by police or withdrawn by the victim. They provide a detailed national picture of police handling of reported sexual assaults.
Other data sources that we used have since been updated. The links below will take you to the latest data, which may be more recent than what was available to us.
- ANROWS (Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited), National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women. This is the world’s longest-running population-level survey of community attitudes towards violence against women.
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Cth), Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence. Key findings about sexual violence in Australia, the contexts in which it occurs and how it varies across population groups.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Crime Victimisation–Australia includes data about victimisation rates for crimes against the person including sexual assault, and rates of increase/decrease over the past 15 years (2008-09 to 2022-23).
Other inquiries
There have been many inquiries into sexual violence. A selection are listed below:
Inquiries that informed our report
- Australian Human Rights Commission, Change the Course: National Report on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment at Australian Universities (Report, 2017).
- Australian Human Rights Commission, Respect@Work: National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces (Report, 2020).
- Centre for Innovative Justice, RMIT University, Strengthening Victoria’s Victim Support System: Victim Services Review (Final Report, November 2020).
- New South Wales Law Reform Commission, Consent in Relation to Sexual Offences Report (2020). In May 2018, the NSW Attorney General asked the NSW Law Reform Commission to review sexual consent laws and report on whether the laws needed to be amended to better protect victims. The Commission consulted widely over three years and received extensive feedback, including almost 200 written submissions and more than 3,850 survey responses.
- Queensland Law Reform Commission, Review of Consent Laws and the Excuse of Mistake of Fact Report, Report, June 2020.
- Royal Commission into Family Violence, Victoria (2015). This was Australia’s first Royal Commission into Family Violence. The Commission made 227 recommendations to reduce the impact of family violence in our community.
- Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Cth), Final Report (December, 2017) and Criminal Justice Report (August, 2017).
- Victorian Law Reform Commission, Sexual Offences (2004 inquiry). In 2001 the Commission was asked to consider whether the criminal justice system was sufficiently responsive to the needs of complainants in sexual offence cases and to recommend changes if necessary. That report made ground-breaking recommendations for reform. Our 2021 report builds on those recommendations.
More recent inquiries
Further inquiries ran at the same time as the VLRC’s, or began afterwards. Some are listed below. This is not a complete list.
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory Law Reform Committee is considering if the Northern Territory should adopt an affirmative consent model. It released a Discussion Paper in May, 2023.
Queensland
In Queensland, the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce has completed two major reports:
- Hear her voice was published in November 2021. It made 89 recommendations for domestic violence and justice system reform. The recommendations were all supported or supported in principle by the Queensland Government.
- Hear her voice 2 – Women’s and girls’ experience of the justice system was published in 2022. It made 188 recommendations for reform to improve women and girls’ experience of the criminal justice system as victim survivors of sexual assault and also as accused persons and offenders.
South Australia
In South Australia, the Attorney-General’s Department is reviewing the criminal justice response to sexual offences. It is considering:
- introducing an affirmative consent model
- changing the subject, timing and frequency of jury directions
- increasing penalties for image-based sexual offences
The Attorney-General’s Department sought community feedback between December 2023 and February 2024.
Western Australia
The Western Australia Law Reform Commission delivered its final report on sexual offences in 2024. As of April, 2024, the report had not been tabled in the Western Australian Parliament. The report will be made public after it is tabled in Parliament. The inquiry for the report started in December, 2021. Separately, the Office of Commissioner for Victims of Crime is leading a review into the experience of sexual violence victim survivors in the criminal justice system in Western Australia.
National
After the completion of the VLRC’s report, the Australian Law Reform Commission was asked to conduct a national inquiry, Justice Responses to Sexual Violence, which began in 2024.
Support services for victim survivors
Victoria Police: Support and resources for sexual offences and child abuse. Information about support services, ways of reporting, and a fact sheet of common misconceptions about rape and sexual assault.
Selected media coverage
12 November 2021: ‘Affirmative consent laws to be introduced in Victoria in ‘incredible step forward’’, AAP, The Guardian
12 November 2021: ‘Affirmative consent laws to be introduced in Victoria for sexual assault cases’, ABC Online
18 May 2021: ‘Improving the justice system for sexual assault survivors’, The Law Report, ABC Radio National
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