Louise Nicholas has come out in support of abolishing depositions hearings, to save victims from having to give evidence twice.
Mrs Nicholas has written to The New Zealand Herald urging the National Party to stop opposing the Criminal Procedure Bill which would allow the change.
Depositions hearings are abbreviated versions of a trial which decide if a prima facie case exists to go to a full trial.
The bill has been stuck in its committee stage in Parliament since March last year because Labour has not had the numbers to push it through.
But now National's justice spokesman Simon Power is seeking a meeting with the Government in a bid to end the impasse.
Mrs Nicholas told the Herald getting rid of depositions hearings would save victims the trauma of giving evidence twice.
She said depositions hearings failed in their objective to decide if there was "a case to answer" before committing an accused to trial.
They were a waste of time and taxpayers' money because most were heard by JPs unless they were high-profile cases. She said JPs sent most cases to trial.
"Deposition hearings do nothing but allow the defence an opportunity to suss out the prosecution witnesses prior to trial so that they can drag up as much dirt on them as possible in order to try and discredit them at trial," she told the Herald.
Mrs Nicholas said she twice had to give evidence at depositions hearings in relation to her allegations of sex offences and corruption by police.
Former policemen Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Clint Rickards were acquitted of raping Mrs Nicholas in the early 1980s, after a High Court trial in 2006 when Rickards was still employed as assistant commissioner. Shipton and Schollum are serving jail terms for another historic rape.
