Antigua and Barbuda's Sexual Offences Model Court: A Specialised Justice Pathway for Survivors

On 21 January 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court's High Court of Justice in Antigua and Barbuda opened a Sexual Offences Model Court (SOMC), described by the region's Chief Justice as the first of its kind in the Eastern Caribbean. It was established by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda with support from the Judicial Reform and Institutional Strengthening (JURIST) Project — funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) — to address chronically low conviction rates and long delays in sexual-offence cases.
The model court bundles several specific reforms: tighter pre-trial case management and fast-track scheduling for sexual-offence matters; assigning only judges, court administrators, police and prosecutors who have received specialised training to these cases; video-conferencing technology that lets vulnerable complainants, including children, give evidence from a remote testimony room instead of the courtroom; a dedicated waiting area and orientation process at the High Court; and direct integration with survivor-support services run by the Directorate of Gender Affairs and the Family and Social Services Division through its Support and Referral Centre.
The Caribbean Court of Justice has since published Revised Model Guidelines for Sexual Offence Cases (2022) for the wider region, presenting Antigua and Barbuda's court as the reference model for other Caribbean jurisdictions to replicate. No public conviction-rate or case-timeline statistics from the court's operation have been located to date, so its measured impact on outcomes for survivors remains undocumented; what is verifiable is that the specialised infrastructure and procedures have been running continuously since 2019.

Read the full analysis: https://genderaffairs.gov.ag/portfolio/the-sexual-offences-model-court/