| Summary: | Court rooms are frightening places for anyone testifying. Even adults are fearful about giving evidence in front of magistrates and judges, and about being questioned by prosecutors and defence lawyers. Imagine how much more scary that must be for a child. Even worse, in sexual offences children have to talk about embarrassing things, for which they do not even have an adequate or accurate vocabulary. South African law has excellent provisions which allow children to testify via intermediaries and in separate rooms, so that they need not encounter the offender. But this is only as good as the provisioning allows. In the 2009 case of Director of Public Prosecutions v the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Court laid emphasis on these special arrangements, and at the time directed the Minister of Justice to place a report before the Constitutional Court on the readiness of the courts to provide the specialised services. Five years on, this report looks at the statistical evidence that is currently available, coupled with empirical evidence gathered from visits to sexual offences court, to determine how much progress has been made towards the goal of children being able to testify in a safe, child-friendly environment.
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