Vulnerable Witnesses within Family and Criminal Proceedings

Frank Feehan KC is a family law barrister at 1 King's Bench Walk and a Recorder in the Crown Court and County Court. Much of his work is in complex medical and sexual abuse cases involving children and learning-disabled adults. He also has a substantial appellate practice concentrating in “human rights” related elements of such cases. He has appeared in most of the major Supreme Court cases in family law in the last 5 years. Caroline Harris is a barrister at 1 King's Bench Walk and practices in family law and criminal law. Family Law Children: Advising and acting in both private and public law proceedings. Criminal Law: She acts for both the prosecution and the defence at all levels and has experience up to and including the Court of Appeal.

…family practitioners will benefit from understanding how the police operate to investigate and gather evidence –particularly in the context of interviewing children, who make up a very obvious category of vulnerable witness…It’s a compact text that appears to do an efficient job of distilling a lot of information into digestible paragraphs and setting out the distinctions between the criminal and family spheres in a useful exercise in comparing and contrasting… so anything that can help to bridge that gap of understanding is welcome… This handbook will be of great assistance to those starting out who need an accessible introduction to this field as well as the more elderly practitioners for whom the legal landscape has changed considerably in the last ten years.

• 1 Summary of the purpose of the handbook 2 General principles as to the examination of witnesses 3 Vulnerable people: pre-proceedings/investigation stage 4 Vulnerable people in the initial stages of proceedings 5 Joint hearings – family and crime 6 Fitness to plead and specific defences arising from being a vulnerable defendant 7 Young defendants and the youth court 8 Intermediaries and ground rules hearings 9 Additional pre-giving evidence considerations for vulnerable witnesses 10 The official solicitor 11 Competence of witnesses in a criminal trial12 Vulnerable witnesses during a criminal trial 13 Vulnerable defendants during the criminal trial process 14 Jury directions and the judge’s summing up 15 Family law