Sir, – About 12 years ago, while I was still CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, I heard that Keir Starmer was on the phone.
He was in Dublin giving a talk at the Law Society and was returning to London that evening. He would like to meet me, if at all possible.
It was another very busy day at the DRCC. At the time I did not know that Keir Starmer had been the DPP in the UK.
However, I told Mr Starmer that if he could come to my office, I would be happy to meet him.
We had a very productive meeting, discussing mainly how to alleviate the harrowing and further traumatising experiences of victims of sexual violence in the court situation and how important it was that everyone coming in contact with victims must have appropriate training, in particular trauma-informed training.
He told me how, as DPP in the UK, he had got all the prosecutors trained because, more often than not, they became judges and it was so important that judges had this specialist training.
I took the idea to the Irish DPP at the time, Claire Loftus, who embraced the suggestion, and the education department of the DRCC went on to provide training for prosecutors thanks to a very pleasant, genuine, thoughtful, kind, interested and interesting Keir Starmer. – Yours, etc,
ELLEN O’MALLEY DUNLOP,
(Adjunct Professor,
University of Limerick
Law School),
Dublin 6W.