The Oireachtas has passed a bill aimed at strengthening protections for victims of sexual offences and human trafficking.

The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023 implements key recommendations made by the O’Malley Review of protections for vulnerable witnesses in sexual-offences cases.

The bill will:

• Ensure anonymity for victims in all trials for sexual offences,
• Extend the victim’s right to separate legal representation if they are being questioned about their previous sexual history,
• Ensure that character evidence at a sentencing hearing for a person convicted of a sexual offence must be made on under oath or by way of affidavit, and
• Ensure that people subject to military law who commit specified sexual offences will be dealt with by An Garda Síochána and the civilian courts, rather than by courts-martial.

“This bill protects the privacy of victims in court, and strengthens measures that protect victims from re-traumatisation and re-victimisation as they engage with the justice system during the investigation and prosecution of sexual offences,” said the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee.

Human trafficking

The bill also includes measures to identify and support victims of human trafficking, and puts a new National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for human-trafficking victims on a statutory footing.

It gives NGO (non-governmental organisations), as well as gardaí, a role in identifying such victims.

It also clears the way for Ireland to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child sexual-abuse material.

‘Hard-to-reach’ victims

Minister McEntee sad that the revised NRM would make “a significant difference” to Ireland’s capacity to identify and support harder-to-reach trafficking victims.

While welcoming the bill’s passage in the Seanad last week, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission expressed concern that it still lacked some “crucial protections”.

In particular, the commission said that it did not provide any form of statutory protection from prosecution for victims of human trafficking – where a person has committed a crime as a direct consequence of their being trafficked.