The Sligo Rape Crisis Centre firmly opposes the use of therapy notes in sexual assault trials. Allowing these private records into court undermines confidentiality, threatens the integrity of therapeutic care, and places survivors at significant risk of re-traumatisation.
Therapy notes are not investigative records. We hear directly from the victims and survivors we support that access to counselling notes is one of the cruellest, most retraumatising and degrading aspects of an incredibly arduous and adversarial wider criminal justice system. Notes from the counselling process are deeply personal reflections created to support healing and recovery, not to bear legal scrutiny.
Following the publication of the Joint Oireachtas Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny on the General Scheme of the Criminal Law and Civil Law (Misc Prv) Bill 2025, Sligo Rape Crisis Centre and other Rape Crisis Centres around Ireland are calling on the Minister for Justice to find a robust legal solution to this issue that acts on the recommendations made by the Committee. In recent weeks, we wrote to the Minister and asked that he not proceed with the Bill in its current form. This legislation is too important to survivors to get it wrong.
The use of counselling notes is one of the most significant barriers facing survivors in trying to seek justice today – it must be confronted and dismantled.
Sligo Rape Crisis Centre acknowledges that this is a complex and challenging area, but we firmly believe that significant and ongoing reform across the justice system is necessary. While many issues need to be tackled if survivors of sexual violence are to feel that the pathway to justice is genuinely open to them, amending the law on access to counselling notes is one of the most urgent.
Sligo Rape Crisis Centre provides support to anyone affected by sexual violence and can contacted via our freephone helpline 1800 750 780.
