Prosecutor wants sex trials closed to public

Press, 26 April 1984, Page 10

Prosecutor wants sex trials closed to public

NZPA-Reuter Washington The prosecutor of the widely publicised New Bedford, Massachusetts, barroom rape trial told a Congressional panel yesterday, that all rape and child abuse trials should be closed to the press and public to protect the victims. A Massachusetts District Attorney, Ronald Pina, said that the live television broadcast of the trial had had a chilling effect on rape victims, discouraging them from seeking prosecution of their assailants. “What we’re doing is scaring away victims of these two very sensitive crimes. We can’t have justice without witnesses in the courtroom,” Mr Pina told the Senate judiciary subcommittee on criminal law.

“The victim became totally vilified,” he said of the publicity surrounding the case in which a young mother of two was raped on a pool-table at Big Dan’s tavern in New Bedford. The subcommittee is considering whether legislation is needed to protect victims from publicity and whether compensation should be given to victims of violent crimes. The sentencing of four of the defendants to long prison terms prompted 10,000 people to march in protest in Fall River, where the trial was held, and 4000 people to march in New Bedford. Many in the community were of Portuguese origin and they protested that the defendants had been victims of because they

were Portuguese immigrants. Mr Pina told the subcommittee that jurors and witnesses in the trial had since received threats. He said that the rape victim had moved from New Bedford and did not believe that she could ever return. Once the trial was broadcast nation-wide, “protection of the victim was over,” even though the court did not allow the victim to be filmed giving her evidence, Mr Pina said. Courts now presume that trials should be open unless there is an overriding reason for keeping them closed. Mr Pina said that that standard should be reversed in the cases of rape and child abuse to presume the trial should be closed.