New South Wales Parliament will consider a bill to further restrict churches and other institutions from using stay applications to prevent abuse survivors having their cases heard. Source: The Guardian.
Stay applications have been used to permanently halt civil cases brought by survivors where perpetrators had died.
The Catholic Church and other institutions effectively used the passage of time to block survivors from having their cases heard by arguing a fair trial was no longer possible.
The High Court delivered a significant blow to the use of stays in November, finding they must only be allowed in rare and exceptional circumstances or risk bringing “the administration of justice into disrepute”.
Legalise Cannabis Party MLC Jeremy Buckingham is preparing to introduce a bill to state parliament to enshrine the High Court findings into statute law and remove any uncertainty around the way stay applications can be used.
It introduces changes that would limit the ability for a defendant to argue for a permanent stay simply because of the passage of time. The bill would also allow survivors who had a stay granted against them since 2016 the ability to have their cases reconsidered.
The NSW Government has previously indicated support for amending the law to enshrine the High Court’s findings.
A spokesperson for NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said the Government had not yet seen Mr Buckingham’s bill and had not been able to consider its contents.
FULL STORY
High court decision to limit Catholic church abuse legal tactics to become law under NSW proposal (By Christopher Knaus, The Guardian)
RELATED COVERAGE
NSW bill to be one step in limiting use of permanent stays against abuse victim-survivors (ABC News)
