for fear their notes will be used by the defence to diminish their credibility at trial.
Ms Lucas refers back to something that Canadian law professor Elizabeth Sheehy once said – that “there’s nothing that you can record about a woman’s life that cannot be used to generate one of the myths that she’s a liar and an idiot”.The 67-year-old says: “I just felt like the defence lawyers were using any dirty trick they had to try and smear a woman’s reputation.”
“I went over and spoke to [my co-workers] and slipped them the envelope because I didn’t know what was going to happen. And they took off, they left the court with the envelope and the magistrate basically said, ‘Stop those women.’ They couldn’t find them.” While Ms Lucas sat in her cell, her co-workers and a lawyer negotiated that the counselling notes could be left in court in a locked briefcase to which only they had the access code.
“The model uses robust measures to ensure that private and confidential counselling notes can only be requested in exceptional circumstances – whereas the current legislation in England and Wales does not do enough to protect survivors, with many being subjected to intrusive and irrelevant requests for therapy notes, which are then used to undermine them or question their credibility.
Australian campaign Dianne Lucas does not mince her words when asked how requests for victims’ therapy notes in sexual assault cases might affect them. “Quite bluntly, I think a person might feel like they’ve been raped all over again.'