© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/092755607X181694 International Journal of Children’s Rights 15 (2007) 43–60 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS www.brill.nl/chil What Responsibility Do Courts Have to Hear Children’s Voices? Judy Cashmore and Patrick Parkinson Faculty of Law, University of Sydney Introduction No social organization can hope to be built on the rights of its members unless there are mechanisms whereby those members may express themselves and wherein those expres- sions are taken seriously. Hearing what children say must therefore lie at the roots of any elaboration of children’s rights. No society will have begun to perceive its children as rightholders until adults’ attitudes and social structures are seriously adjusted towards making it possible for children to express views, and towards addressing them with respect (Eekelaar, 1992, p. 228). Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is explicit about children’s rights to express their views and to have an opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting them. This article will focus on the responsibility of courts, and in particular, that of the judicial officer, to facilitate children’s participation and improve their experience of the process in two important areas of law where children’s participation can have an impact on the outcome: cases involving children as witnesses in child sexual assault matters, and as informants or participants in private family law matters. 1 While the par- ticular focus is on two common law countries (Australia and New Zealand), sim- ilar issues arise and are relevant to other common law jurisdictions. It focuses on data from several Australian studies concerning children’s experience in criminal and family law proceedings conducted by the authors. While the role that children play as witnesses in criminal proceedings and as the subject of family law proceedings differs in a number of ways, judicial offi- cers in both types of matters have a responsibility to ensure that children are properly heard and respected in both processes. When children are witnesses in criminal proceedings, their evidence is either presented in person in the court- room or by means of closed-circuit television and/or pre-recorded evidence from outside the courtroom. As the primary witness in child sexual assault matters, CHILL_15-1-04 Cashmore-Parkinson 4/26/07 7:20 PM Page 43