‘It took great courage for the victims in this case to speak out’ – PPSpublished at 12:15 BST<\/p>\n
12:15 BST<\/p>\n
Catherine Kierans from the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) said the “outcome reflects the strength of the partnership between the PSNI and the PPS,
\nand our shared commitment to tackling sexual crimes and securing justice for
\nvictims”.<\/p>\n
“We recognise that it took great courage for the victims in
\nthis case to speak out,” Kierans said. <\/p>\n
“Victims of sexual abuse should never feel shame for what
\nwas done to them. The shame belongs solely to those who commit these offences. We know that the criminal justice
\noutcome will not heal all the hurt the victims have experienced,” she said. <\/p>\n
“However, we
\nhope it will be of some comfort to them as they look to the future.”<\/p>\n
Kierans said the PPS recognises it can be daunting for victims of sexual offences to come forward. <\/p>\n
However, she added: “My message is that help is available. The first step may be speaking to someone you trust. If you are a victim of sexual abuse, no matter how much time has passed, or who the offender is, dedicated police officers and prosecutors will treat you with respect and dignity.<\/p>\n
“Where there is sufficient evidence to provide a
\nreasonable prospect of conviction, we will not hesitate to prosecute and hold
\noffenders to account.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘It took great courage for the victims in this case to speak out’ – PPSpublished at 12:15 BST…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-803535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}