Editorial: Despite some grave concerns, the Gillen proposals for a ban on access to sex trials are implemented

​In the early summer of 2019, the judge Sir John Gillen announced recommendations on the overhaul of sex trials in Northern Ireland.

Among his recommendations was that the public be barred from attending court in such hearings.

The review followed the rape trial of rugby players the year before, when several young men were acquitted of rape or offences such as assault. The trial lasted nine weeks, the jury unanimously judged them not guilty in under than four hours. Despite this swift verdict, there was little sense that it might mean that the case against the men had been assessed to be weak by those who heard all the evidence divulged in court. On the contrary, a public outcry ensued that implied it should be made easier to secure convictions in sex trials. Happily, though, the then NI lord chief justice told this newspaper in 2019 that nothing should be done to imperil the right to fair trial.

In spring 2019, the distinguished legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg QC delivered a lecture in Belfast after which he was asked by the audience about reforms to sex trials, when he said that before excluding press or public from a criminal trial it was better first to use special measures to protect the complainant, for example "a complainant can give evidence behind a curtain”.

Mr Rozenberg was speaking in Belfast when the UK Supreme Court had been there, "to bring the court to the people". He said: "The message from the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is to open the courts as much as possible."

Mr Rozenberg then told this newspaper that “to exclude the public and allow in the media" from a sex trial should be “almost the last resort”. Yet that has now happened, with no criticism from Stormont MLAs apart from Jim Allister KC. There have been grave concerns about other Gillen proposals, which have already been implemented, to no complaint.