Restorative Justice and Sexual Abuse – a New Zealand Perspective.

Source: (2004) Paper presented at the symposium of The Australian & New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, Auckland, New Zealand, 17 April. Downloaded 2 November 2005.

In another context, Fred McElrea has proposed that restorative justice is part of four wider transitions underway both within and outside of the world of corrections: a world-wide movement toward recognition of victims’ rights; an international trend toward the democratization of process and the empowerment of the community; a tendency toward holist approaches to problems; and a move away from procedural justice towards substantive justice. In this framework, McElrea discusses restorative justice and sexual abuse. He begins with an overview of key values of restorative justice. This leads to remarks on the legal framework in New Zealand, the exclusion of sexual abuse cases from government-funded restorative justice schemes, the issue of power imbalance in such cases, the New Zealand Youth Court as a source of restorative justice experience in sexual abuse cases, adult court sentences in New Zealand, and the vindication of the victim.