Helping judges cope with exposure to life's horrors

A new initiative is being launched in England and Wales to help judges cope with constant exposure to the horrors of violence and sexual abuse, through their work. The new Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Burnett, made this announcement during the first press conference of his term of office. He spoke of being very conscious that judges have ‘a fairly relentless diet of serious sex cases’, and that this ‘harrowing’ exposure must ‘have an impact’. In her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, legal writer Carmel Rickard looks at what Burnett said, and asks whether the time has come for a similar initiative in SA.