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Victims’ Commissioner said families often talked about the legal process being as traumatic as the crime itself The families of murder victims receive worse treatment from the courts than the rich and wealthy who want to protect their privacy and they need a statutory ‘victims’ law’ to protect their rights. The call from the government-appointed Victims’ Commissioner, Louise Casey, comes six months after she conducted the largest survey of bereaved families. Casey said the criminal justice system left “families trembling in its wake” with many of the stories she heard just “jaw droppingly awful” and the survey demonstrated that families that had had no involvement with the police and courts actually coped better with their bereavement. She said that families often talked about the legal process being almost as traumatic as the crime itself: “We ask people not to go out and take the law into their own hands. We ask that people come to court and give evidence so that nasty people can be locked up. In return the criminal justice system needs to do better,” said Casey. She said that she sometimes wondered that if murder victims’ families had more money and weren’t facing an untold bill because of their devastation, “would we treat them in the same way?” Casey said the treatment of Milly Dowler’s family in the Levi Bellfield court case had thrown the spotlight “on this rather odd scenario where in one court we have rich people pursuing their civil injunctions … whereas down the road in the criminal court a family is being stripped in no uncertain terms of some of the moments with their family.” The Victims’ commissioner says in her ground-breaking report published on Wednesday that families were often treated as a legal inconvenience. “Families deserve to bury the body of their child without defence lawyers asking for autopsy after autopsy. They deserve not to have to sit next to the defendant’s family in court listening to them laughing, or being intimidated by them. They deserve to be told that their husband’s killer is going to be released before they bump into him in the supermarket. They deserved to be treated with some humanity in the witness box.” The proposed victims’ law would include: • a criminal practice direction to ensure families were treated with dignity and respect during court cases; • judges should clear the court when particularly distressing evidence is about to be heard or at least the families given due warning; • the right to information from the crown prosecution service, including meeting the prosecuting lawyer; • the right to sentencing remarks from the judge in writing and trial transcripts; • release of the body back to the family within 28 days;• courts to have a family meeting to ensure that their needs during the trial are met. The survey of the 400 bereaved families showed that more than 60% faced financial difficulties after the case with each family facing an average bill of £37,000 for funerals, court travel costs and cleaning up crime scenes. Casey said that more than 80% of families suffered symptoms of trauma after going to court and the same proportion had to wait more than a month to bury their loved ones. A quarter stopped working permanently. The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, agreed that more could be done to get families the help they needed and tominimise the impact of bereavement. “We are working on our review of all victim support arrangements – this will include consideration of victims’ services, entitlements and redress, designed to ensure that our time, money and best efforts are targeted at those in greatest need. As part of this review, we have been in constant dialogue with the Victims’ Commissioner, victims and victim support organisations,” he said. ends Crime Alan Travis guardian.co.uk