Dear Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service,

Background to this FOISA 2002 request

Information from the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) details that they have statutory responsibilities under the Victims & Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014 to communicate acquittals or guilty verdicts at the end of a prosecution to some persons who gave evidence in a trial.

As the Scottish Courts & Tribunal Service (SCTS) will realise there could be other parties who may need to be informed of the verdict from a trial, at the end of that trial. These parties could include, but are not limited to, the six (6) examples below:

1. Police officers who have been “selective" in the evidence and information they have passed to the COPFS.

2. Local Authority Social Workers who have participated in a multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARAC) where false, erroneous and libellous information has been provided and thence passed onto the Police Scotland interim Vulnerable Persons Database (iVPD) which has then been recorded on Social Work systems.

3. Local Authority Social Workers who have participated in a Inter-Agency Discussion (a so called IRD) where false, erroneous and libellous information has been provided and thence passed onto the Police Scotland interim Vulnerable Persons Database (iVPD) which has then been recorded on Social Work systems.

4. Third Sector organisations who may be “Data Controllers" under the definitions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and who have participated in a MARAC in the capacity of an Independent Domestic Abuse Advocate (IDAA) or “MARAC chair”.

5. Local Authority Head Teachers who may have participated in a MARAC and “selectively ignored” child concern reports and other salient information that they could reasonably be expected to access (e.g. handover notes).

6. Employees from Third Sector organisations with child protection responsibilities that are funded by the Scottish Government but not regulated by the Care Inspectorate.

The SCTS will understand that some prosecutions could be considered “malicious" in nature and that a consequence of the prosecution and indeed the purpose of the prosecution could be for Parental Alienation of one parent by the primary care giving (resident) parent and/or other family members (e.g. a grandmother).

The SCTS should reasonably understand that when a parent who has been prosecuted and has been separated from the child/children (sometimes for years in the case of a protracted prosecution) there could be a great deal of confusion as to what has taken place on the part of the child/children. Clearly any communication to the child/children about the outcome of a prosecution will be compromised if the primary caregiving parent, other family member(s), Police Officers, Social workers, Head Teachers etc were Crown witnesses in the trial. The situation would become even more complex if Crown witnesses were compromised by the verdict, for example the sheriff in their Judgement regarded some witnesses as being unreliable.

The end result of the scenario outlined above would be a child/children being "kept in the dark" about a prosecution and to leave them vulnerable to coercive control regarding what had happened. In short, child abuse.

FOISA 2002 request

Under FOISA 2002 please provide me with the information contained in your records as follows:

The recorded statutory requirements of the Scottish Courts & Tribunal Service to communicate the verdict (i.e. guilty/acquitted) of a solemn trial to the child/children (who did not give evidence in the trial) of the accused person in that trial.

Yours faithfully,

SJA Grove

Dear Chalmers, Sean,

The SCTS are thanked for providing this important information.

Yours sincerely,

SJA Grove