Criminal procedure

O'Malley would later say he could not remember precisely what had been said, but the significance of this episode became impossible to ignore once the events of the 18th of December were reconstructed.

Criminal proceedings were progressed and eventually took place at Dumbarton Sheriff Court in January 2021.

Two defendants faced the court, Christopher O'Malley, the hotel's night porter, and Cameron House Resort Lot Lomond, the company that owned and operated the hotel.

Cameron House Resort specifically pleaded guilty to two offences under the Fire Scotland Act 2005.

The Scottish Government was asked to consider requiring active fire suppression systems when historic buildings are converted into hotels and to examine the particular risk created by hidden cavities, age and varying standards of construction.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was also asked to shorten the time between carrying out a fire safety audit and issuing its written findings.

And although the changes could not alter what happened at Cameron House, they demonstrated why Jane Midgley had continued pushing for this inquiry even after the criminal proceedings were complete.

Cameron House eventually reopened in 2021 following a major restoration and redevelopment.

It may support findings of responsibility, perhaps even acknowledgments of responsibility, in forums such as the International Court of Justice or arbitral tribunals, in truth commissions or commissions of inquiry, and in regional or national transitional justice processes.

Such mechanisms may operate alongside criminal proceedings.

They also may operate solely on their own, especially if criminal proceedings are unavailable or if broader forms of reparation besides criminal punishment are given priority.

Having outlined international child law as it relates to conflict situations, in particular its identification of grave violations, its embrace of child and human rights, and its relationship to criminal and also reparative justice, let us next situate child taking within that subfield of law.

As already defined, child-taking occurs when a state or other powerful entity first takes the child and second endeavors to alter, erase, or remake the child's identity.

This view, I will admit, runs counter to practice in some, if not all, contemporary international courts.

The same may be true of of some national courts, but by no means all.

In a time when national criminal proceedings pursued by some form of universal or extraterritorial jurisdiction seem to be on the rise, that variation invites consideration of new and newly effective prosecutorial strategies.