Restorative Justice and Sexual Violence: Ireland joins the International Debate

Many jurisdictions have expressed reservations about the potential of restorative justice in cases of sexual violence. In an Irish context, the National Commission on Restorative Justice recommended in its Final Report in 2009 that "certain serious offences such as sexual assaults should be excluded from the initial phases of implementation". In reviewing the literature and developments in Ireland we argue that the time has come to move beyond the limitations of adversarial approaches to justice in cases of sexual violence and to extend the repertoire of 'justice' approaches to sexual crime to include those opportunities presented by approaches that engage victims and offenders in relational dialogue and restorative potentialities.