The Slow Process of the Criminal Courts

I received a subpoena to testify for a court case regarding a patient I had attended to a few years earlier in Muar; a high school girl who had been raped by her father.

I think there are patients in your career that you never forget. Sometimes, as the people who first see the cases you can't help but wonder what happened to these patients, and I was thankful that justice seemed to be incoming.

Until I got the call from the district officer that the case had to be postponed.

The child apparently had changed her mind after the first day of the court case and had patched relations with her father - her own father who had raped her repeatedly from the age of 8. She was 14 when I met her.

I have no idea what happened in the time span of a day to make her change her mind. From what I managed to glean, she had become upset in the course of proceedings, either with the police or the legal counsel.

The case apparently has to be re-filed as they prosecutors couldn't proceed without the child's cooperation.

The legal process is so tricky. Two years and it's only now that the case has come up to court, only to be abandoned.

I can only hope that the victim has recovered and gone on with her life.