A rape survivor has called for a complete ban on the use of counselling notes as evidence in criminal trials.
Last May, the Criminal Law and Civil Law Bill 2025 was approved by Cabinet, which includes measures aimed at ensuring that counselling records are only released in criminal trials where the court decides that they contain material relevant to legal proceedings.
The Bill was today subject to pre-legislative scrutiny at the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, and heard from campaigner Hazel Behan, who was raped in Portugal in 2004.
Ms Behan said the proposed changes to the legislation still allows access to a victim's private counselling notes "under the guise of ensuring a fair trial".
She told the committee: "The Government’s proposed changes still leave open the possibility that a survivor’s most personal words can be demanded and scrutinised in court.
"That possibility alone is enough to deter many survivors from seeking the essential support they need to move forward after the unthinkable.
"Notes written in therapy, which is a space where survivors like me can begin to process the unthinkable, regain some sense of safety and slowly piece ourselves together - they hold no evidentiary value."
Ms Behan said the practice is used to undermine victims and damage their credibility, and that while "it is not the victim who is on the trial" too many "leave courtrooms feeling as it we’re the ones who have been accused".
She said: "It is an outdated, misogynistic process which has no place in a justice system claiming to be trauma informed.
"It turns therapy into evidence, it tells survivors that their private attempts to heal can be weaponised against them.
"Instead of finding safety in therapy, we are forced to self-censor, stay silent or carry our trauma alone.
"This is not justice, it is re-traumatisation sanctioned by this system."
Ms Behan added that the "only just path forward" was the total exclusion of therapy notes in criminal trials as survivors "should not have to choose between healing and seeking justice".
