|
The chapter on Counselling Adult
Victims and Witnesses contains a warning and wise advice:
‘It is always in the defence's
interest within an adversarial criminal trial to seek to discredit any
evidence against a defendant and any ill-focused or poorly disciplined
pre-trial counselling sessions are easy targets for allegations of
'coaching' with the effect of partially or wholly undermining the evidence.
Therapists are a relatively easy
target for these allegations. As
soon as the defence knows that therapy has taken place they will realise
that this is a potential area of weakness in the prosecution's case. They
will also be aware that therapists have a collective reputation for being
poor witnesses in the box. They are viewed as a wild card who can often be
tempted into making comments that the defence can exploit.
Therapists who are untrained in
giving evidence and the expectations of courts blunder blindly on the false
assumption that their skills in the therapy room will protect them in the
box. The reality is probably the opposite. Many therapists may have made
better witnesses before they trained as therapists. Most therapy trainings
increase sensitivity to the client's subjective experience, whether
cognitive, emotional or interpersonal, and train the therapist to use their
own subjectivity strategically to advance the therapeutic process. Therapy
of all kinds validates subjectivity and each therapy has its preferred
concepts and language to communicate its insights about healing subjective
wounds. Taking an impartial and objective view with a fixation on facts is
exactly what most therapists have been trained away from. Yet, it is these
very unwanted characteristics in a therapist that make a good witness. The
best witnesses have an ability to communicate a fact as clearly and simply
as possible, stripped of irrelevant detail and personal or professional
opinion, especially when based on subjective experience. Therapeutic jargon
should be avoided at all times. It may be quoted out of context later in the
trial in ways that the witness had not intended. Alternatively, it may open
up dangerous lines of questioning in cross-examination, firstly about the
meaning of the term, and then its application to this client. The request
for a few specific examples opens up endless possibilities in
cross-examination. It is often the therapist who wants to use their time in
the box to impress with their therapeutic competence or the brilliance of a
particular approach to therapy that is easiest prey in cross-examination.
They are playing the wrong game to the wrong rules, rather like someone
unknowingly playing 'Blind Man's Buff, a children's party game, in the
middle of a closely fought rugby match. The outcome tends to be painful for
the therapist and ultimately can be very damaging to the client's respect
and trust, especially if his or her case is damaged, however unwittingly.’
The authors show us what to do,
offer further guidance and what to avoid to prevent us falling into this
trap presented succinctly in a table.
So many therapy books contain too
much padding with references to other published work that is already
familiar. The reader has to work hard to ‘extract the gold from the dross’.
This title is not one of these. Your reviewer read the whole book through in
one sitting because of the clarity of the writing and logical sequence. I
wanted to know what to do next. Bearing in mind that this is about legal
matters, it may be described as ‘un-put-downable’ ….. – well almost! Lets’
hope that the rest of the series is as good.
With an increasing amount of
litigation and domestic strife it is not so much a question of ‘Will I need
this book?’ as ‘When will I need it?’ So buy it now, read the chapter on
court orders so that your note keeping bears in mind the probability of
disclosure of your records to a court and the two chapters on counselling
clients as witnesses and victims. Unless you want to seek work as an expert
witness you can at this stage put it on the shelf ready for that dreaded day
when a letter from a solicitor arrives concerning one of your clients.
|
