No Witness

When I wrote about the Suzanne Pilley murder trial the other day - see post dated 16 March 2012 'Criminal Jigsaw' - I was reminded of the following post I put up on the blog site back in April 2011.

Now I remember very well just how hard it was to persuade the GTCS to change its complaints handling procedures - because many of the teacher members were vehemently opposed to dropping the requirement for a third party witness before launching an investigation. 

Now if the GTCS at them time had been the Lothian and Borders Police of today - a  scheming murderer would be walking the streets of Edinburgh Scot-free.

Which just goes to show you how conservative and inward looking lots of organisations are - and why they need a good old shake from top to bottom - from time to time.

Rules of Evidence (12 April 2011)

Ten years ago and more - I was appointed as a Member of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) - by Scottish Ministers.

The GTCS was - and still is - the professional regulatory body for teachers in Scotland and deals with a wide range of policy matters - including how to handle complaints.

My role was to look at issues from a 'public interest' point of view - since most other members were either teachers - or were drawn from a teaching background.

One of the first things that struck me was the inadequacy of the complaints procedures.

Because they required - at that time - third party corroboration before a complaint against a teacher could even be investigated.

In other words, an independent third party witness had to back up the initial complaint - before the GTCS would take the matter seriously.

Now given my trade union background - I though this was a monstrous position for the GTCS to adopt - because in other areas of working life all complaints were properly investigated - even anonymous complaints.

Many of my teaching colleagues on the GTCS thought this was crazy - there will be a flood of bogus complaints they cried - and teachers will face the the modern day equivalent of 'kangaroo courts'.

Complete nonsense of course - because offences involving harassment and bullying - or even child abuse - are not carried out right under the noses of independent witnesses.

No, the kind of people who behave in this way wait for the 'right' moment - when no one else is around.

So demanding independent corroboration - no matter what the circumstances - is an impossible hurdel to overcome - and means that bullies, harrassers and abusers find it much easier to escape justice.

The fact is that other forms of evidence can be just as powerful - and with safeguards to protect both the complainer and the accused - there is no need to insist on corroboration.

Many employers have come to that conclusion in dealing with such problems at the workplace - so have some courts - and so did the GTCS, albeit after a long hard fight.

So maybe the time has come to consider a change in Scots law - a change in the rules of evidence - when it comes to dealing with accusations of rape and sexual assault.