Victoria to introduce a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for rape
Premier Ben Carroll has pledged that a re-elected Victorian Labor government would legislate tougher penalties for rapists, sex offenders and family violence perpetrators.
Victorian Premier Ben Carroll has vowed that a future re-elected Labor government will pass legislation imposing life sentences for rape, requiring a five-year increase in maximum penalties for all serious sexual offenses, and introducing a 30-year minimum for offenders who murder their current or former partners. The Premier stressed the urgent need to address violence that kills a Victorian woman every two weeks.
Under the Labor plan, the government will also enact two new laws to combat family violence loopholes, including a provision to charge family violence offenders who abandon victims in dire need of emergency medical care, following the deaths of Narelle Simmons and Belinda Jones. Additionally, the government plans to amend the Evidence Act to allow courts to consider an accused's prior sexual abuse history as evidence, and to prevent lawyers from employing humiliating or invasive cross-examination methods, which have been deemed retraumatising by victim-survivors.
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