If Annette Stipp had the opportunity to do it all over again, she'd think twice about it.
The Times of South Africa reported Monday that Stipp, a witness for the prosecution in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial, talked about her experience for a recently released research paper on the trauma of being a witness in a criminal trial.
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According to the Times, Johan and Annette Stipp live near Pistorius' former home in Pretoria, South Africa, in which the double-amputee sprinter and Olympian shot and killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day morning in 2013. The prosecution used them as witnesses of what they heard and saw that fateful morning.
"We felt trampled by a bus," Annette Stipp said of the cross-examination by Barry Roux, Pistorius' lawyer according to the Times. She described her experience in testifying as "emotional, daunting and exhausting" in the research paper.
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Stipp said she felt as if she were being attacked personally and said she was not sure she would go through that experience again.
She intimated that she was particularly upset by Roux's comments in which he said the testimonies by the Stipps were "exaggerated and contradictory ... creates doubt as to (their) reliability."
"You feel you are being attacked personally. Your integrity is questioned. We felt that (we) were being attacked as (liars)," Stipp said.
Karen Tewson, head of court preparation at the National Prosecuting Authority, conducted the interview for a research paper on the study of witnesses. According to her paper, many witnesses and victims feel traumatized and suffer "secondary victimization on the witness stand," usually during the cross-examination process, the Times reported.
The documentation of such experiences could lead to potential witnesses and victims refusing to testify, Tewson concluded, which could result in "vigilantism, mob justice and other forms of anarchy."
Judge Thokozile Masipa is expected to announce her verdict on the Pistorius murder trial on Sept. 11.
Is it fair for a bystander to get harassed on the witness stand? Comment below or tell us @SportsWN.
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