In the Dock

incentives. This was successfully rebutted in R v John and Josie Connors, by stating that the UK wasduty bound by the Convention to provide support and assistance: therefore they were entitlementsrather than incentives.The ATMG learnt that oppressive cross-examinations of trafficked persons are common in the contextof trafficking prosecutions. One trafficked person interviewed stated:“I was so sick. I was tired. In the end of the questions I was having problems concentrating on what theywere saying. The lawyers asked me many bad questions and it made me feel like they were trying to say Iwas a liar and a prostitute.”As well as questions posed to cause inferences, techniques such as “pinning out” 271 or multiplequestions in one statement, can lead to the re-experience of trauma under high-pressurecircumstances leading to confusion and secondary (or post-crime) victimisation. 272 It is for the judgeand prosecutor to be vigilant and object to such questioning where it is irrelevant and oppressive. Thecross examination in the Rochdale case 273 was described as oppressive; however, the judge onlypermitted questions relevant to the exploitation period and objected to questions regarding thetrafficked person’s prior history. However, the judge and the prosecutor cannot pre-empt whatquestions defence barristers will ask, and sometimes when the question is asked the damage hasalready been done to the victim-witness. Presently, defence barristers are currently not obliged toundergo training on the cross-examination of traumatised witnesses. However, the Advocacy TrainingCouncil in its 2011 report Raising the Bar recommended compulsory training and certification forbarristers conducting cases involving vulnerable witnesses. 274Some prosecutors also noted that traffickers appear to prepare themselves in case of arrest. Onelegal practitioner construed:“[T]hey take nice smiley photographs of the victims and things like that so they have those on theircomputer. And that may be before the abuse has actually started and they can then say “oh look, you arefine, you are happy; I was so nice to you and I bought you clothes and I was being kind”.Or the defendant may simply assert the trafficked person consented and make a full denial of thevictim’s account of mistreatment. This assists the defence barristers in questioning the credibility ofthe victim. Another line of attack is to invoke trafficking myths (whether sincerely believed or not) andto correlate these to the victims’ behaviour. For instance a legal practitioner described:“[T]hey had the opportunity to report to the police, they didn’t do so for X period of time … I think this canbe explained to juries but I don’t know, there is still that problem that the normal “way”, in inverted commas,which victims behave may not apply to victims of trafficking and that can leave arguments open to thedefence and generally [these arguments are] quite specious”.In R v Lucy Adeniji, 275 a case involving child domestic servitude, one victim returned to thedefendant’s house after being placed with another family. The defence argued that if treatment was sohorrific she would not have returned. However, the prosecuting advocate was able to demonstratethat the victim was effectively dependent on the trafficker, as she had nowhere to go and spoke littleEnglish, coupled with a distrust of the authorities. Again this reinforces the need in some cases for271“Pinning out” is a term used to describe the practice of barristers asking leading questions to witnesses to get them to agree withcertain facts before getting to their main argument which is framed by these agreed facts. This is then used to argue that the witnessmust logically agree with that barrister’s particular argument.272Doerner, W., & Lab, S. Victimology (2012).273Hassan, supra note 243.274The Advocacy Training Council, Raising the Bar (2011) Available at:www.advocacytrainingcouncil.org/images/word/raisingthebar.pdf [last accessed 11 March 2013]275R v Adeniji at Isleworth Crown Court, 18 March 2011.84