How different approaches could help sexual assault survivors find justice

Anthony North QC calls them “dinosaur counsel”.

They are, he says, “barristers who grew up in the age where you aim to discredit complainants by belittling them confusing them, and making them just look ridiculous”.

Mr North says it’s not the way younger barristers approach rape cases.

“But it is the way older ones work, and of course older judges,” he tells RN’s Saturday Extra.

“So it might be that that’s still the remaining barrier.”

The barrier, that is, to sexual assault survivors finding justice in the criminal justice system.

Mr North, a retired Federal judge, is in the middle of an inquiry in his role as chair of the Victorian Law Reform Commission into the way the system responds to sexual offences.