By Simon Collins NZ Herald

Men or women who beat their partners will find it much harder to escape prosecution under a proposed law that would accept victims’ statements to police as evidence, even if they later changed their minds.

Chief District Court Judge Russell Johnson told a conference in Auckland yesterday that the Evidence Bill, expected to be passed next year, would reinforce court reforms aimed at resolving domestic violence cases quickly rather than trapping victims in a “deadly dance” of legal delays.
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If a woman is forced to give evidence, and tells the court a different story from what she told police originally, the bill would also allow the judge to accept her original statement to police as contrary evidence.
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Judge Johnson said the courts had struggled to cope with domestic violence cases “ever since the police began to intervene in family disputes, which dates back now to about 1992”.
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“You don’t have to be in the game long to know that unless a family violence case is heard within about six weeks, you haven’t got a case, because for one reason or another you haven’t got evidence.
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Judge Johnson said a new “fast-track” process was now being followed in special family violence courts in Waitakere and Manukau.

The Manukau experiment had led to more guilty pleas and fewer “no-shows” in court.

“Far more often than ever before, the victims are turning up also, [enabling] a consultative process to go on.”