Legal Advice for Abuse Survivors
A person who has been physically, emotionally or sexually abused especially as children, then it is a crime against you and you have the right to go against law and punish the abuser. The abuser can be punished by following a criminal persecution resulting in a prison sentence. We are presenting the legal advice for a person who has faced such kind of an abuse in the past. First of all, you must go and tell the police. It would be more appropriate if you go to the child protection unit and tell them what exactly happened. It is important to keep the officers up to the case. The police will need you to make a statement in order to investigate the allegation of the abuse. It will be registered in written form with your signature. They will ask you to come on different instances when asked in order to complete the statement and ask some necessary questions for further investigations. Once the authorities confirm the merit in your statement, then relevant witnesses will be reviewed. These also include the probable witnesses who have been abused by the same abuser. They will then try to trace the abuser who, if caught, can either admit to the crime or deny the charges. In case the abuser denies the charges leveled against it but the evidence is strongly against it, then the abuser may be persecuted by holding criminal trial. If the crime is proved beyond doubt, then the appropriate punishment is decided. If the abuser pleads not guilty but is still found guilty, then the punishment will be severe.
The abuser is free to change the plea of being guilty or not guilty any time he wants. But if the abuser pleads not guilty, then the accuser will have to bring strong evidence against the abuser. This will also involve questioning of the accuser on the witness statement in the court.
The civil law of handling the matter is different from the criminal procedure explained above. In the civil procedure, the victim can be awarded money and damages to the injuries along with these; you will also be given medical treatment, travel expenses and lost earnings. In order to claim these compensations, you need to contact a solicitor. A solicitor is a specialist for cases of compensation and is necessary since the claim for compensation is quite complex. These solicitors are available to give you a free interview either in person or via phone call. They require you to inform them about the case clearly and also for you to decide whether you are comfortable with that solicitor or not. The civil procedure is generally a long process. This solicitor will need to prove that the abuse against you did actually happen and resulted in injuries to you. This procedure will involve a number of documents to be examined. The defendant will then try to defend your claims and restrict the access to valuable information needed to prove your case. These cases can take one or two years to complete.
A research was made on the effect of early legal advice and the process of making decisions by workers of an asylum. The effect of legal advice on the decision making of caseworkers depends largely on the process of gathering information. By realizing this potential, the workers can have access to the information required for making good and quality decisions. Legal representatives consider themselves to perform a large number of important roles and also claim that they can assist in the process of gathering information. According to them, they make use of the following methods to gather information;
- Checking that the facts which are relevant to the claim are completely mentioned and all forms of inconsistencies between the statement and interview are cleared up.
- Making sure that all the errors do not create any kind of inconsistencies.
- Ensuring that the home office interpreter is correctly interpreting.