Dr Annie Cossins is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales.  She is the founder and Convenor of the National Child Sexual Assault Reform Committee - a high-level committee comprising all Directors of Public Prosecution, various District Court judges, academics, and Children`s Commissioners (amongst others) which has met annually for the past 8 years and is presently finalising its discussion paper on reforms for the prosecution of child sex offences around Australia.  Dr Cossins was also a member of the Criminal Justice and Sexual Offences Taskforce which was established by the NSW Attorney-General in 2004 after a submission by her and the NSW Rape Crisis Centre to the Attorney-General for the establishment of a taskforce to examine changes to the laws of evidence in NSW and the feasibility of specialist courts for sex offences in NSW.  As a result of this Taskforce, a number of legislative changes have been made to the substantive criminal law as well as procedural laws concerning the conduct of sexual assault trials in NSW.

She was a founding member of the NSW Working Party Concerning the Confidentiality of Sexual Assault Counsellors` Notes and the main author of submissions to the NSW Attorney-General`s Department which were used as the basis for the introduction of s 126H, Evidence Act 1995 (NSW), the first sexual assault communications privilege enacted in Australia.  She was also a member of the Child Protection Internet Taskforce, Ministry of Police, 2003-2004, a member of The Innocence Panel, (NSW Ministry for Police) between 2001-2003, a member of the Child Sexual Assault Jurisdiction Working Group on Practice and Procedure (NSW Attorney-General`s Department) 2002, and a consultant to Parliament of New South Wales, Legislative Council, Standing Committee on Law and Justice, Inquiry into Child Sexual Assault Prosecutions in NSW, 2002.  She was recently been appointed as the only academic member of the Advisory Committee of the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration on a Guide to Children Giving Evidence.  In 2005, she was nominated for the Law and Justice Foundation Justice Medal.  She is a member of the board of the Centre for Gender Related Violence Studies at the University of New South Wales and is the Chair of the Advisory Committee of that Centre.

Sex, Race, Bodies and Crime

To understand crime as a social practice, it is necessary to understand the meanings associated with different bodies - male, female, black, white.  The body matters and what the body does matters.  In this statement there are encapsulated two concepts - the social meanings that individuals ascribe to their female, male or transsexual bodies (the sexed body), the social meanings ascribed to what these specifically sexed bodies do (gender) and the social meanings ascribed to different biological characteristics (the raced body).  Bodies matter to those who commit crime (for example, male on male violence; men`s sexual assault of women), to those who fear crime (the fear of crime is a fear of the sexed male body or a particular `raced` and sexed male body), and to those who seek to impose a rigid law and order agenda (for example, over-policing of the adolescent male body and the black male body).

Alternative Models for Prosecuting Child Sex Offences in Australia

Dr Anne Cossins (Law) is writing a Discussion Paper on behalf of the National Child Sexual Assault Reform Committee. The Paper constitutes a review of all aspects of the adversarial trial process, its problems and limitations in relation to prosecuting sex offences and proposals and recommendations for reform.