‘It needs to stop!’ Bring those responsible for leak to justice Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

A magistrate and attorney are in agreement that the leaking of confidential documents from within organisations of repute has to stop.

This comes after the latest incident, the release of a complainant’s witness report via social media last week. The image in rotation carried the complainant’s personal information as well. Neither was the name nor address of the complainant redacted in the document.

Attorney-at-law Roger Forde KC told Loop News:

“I took issue with the fact that the station diary was copied and published on the Internet. It gave full details…What is wrong with this is that females no longer have the comfort of reporting incidents to the police in that they become public documents.”

He said he fears that some women will suffer in silence to avoid possible unwanted attention, recourse, or embarrassment.

Magistrate Deidre McKenna told the court “It needs to stop!”

After Attorney Forde said that he is not pointing fingers at any one police officer as the culprit behind the release because it could have been a maid, a cleaner, a gardener who got hold of the document, he insisted however, that he is holding police responsible and accountable for not having kept the information securely enough to prevent this occurrence. He argued this kind of behaviour erodes the women’s confidence in the whole police service.

And he said, “Those who are responsible should be brought to justice!”

Magistrate McKenna told Loop News she does not know where the leak occurred and would not make presumptions, but she said that there are serious consequences of such actions.

She said, “It could prejudice the case. It opens up the two parties to that scrutiny.” Acknowledging that rape is “a sensitive matter”, she said this could be “very embarrassing”. She said it leaves a complainant to relive the moment. And she said in this case in particular, whether the accused is a public person or not, the public now has the complainant’s account and “people will make their own calls”.

Asked if this leak could be grounds for a dismissal, Attorney Forde said, “Constitutional Action is going to come.”

Meanwhile, Magistrate McKenna explained that if and when the time comes for the trial to commence, the judge would just need to give the members selected for the jury the usual directions to disregard news articles and any other materials.

Both gave comment at Oistins Magistrate’s Court today, October 24, 2022.

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