For Nina, the prospect of walking into a police station and reporting her stepfather for child sexual abuse was, she says, her “worst nightmare ... It was something I’d dreaded my whole life,” she says. She had been raped by her stepfather for years when she was a child – and he had promised all sorts of consequences if she ever told anyone. Her mother, he told her, would kill herself. He implied that he might, too – but one thing he always assured her was that he would never go to jail.
When she was in her late teens, Nina finally told her mum, who was devastated, but believed her. It took years, however, before she felt ready to press charges. “One of the things that stopped me from telling anyone that it was happening at the time was the terror of standing in a courtroom putting all that shame on show – and that felt even worse the older I got.
“It took a good few years before I realised that the right thing to do was to prosecute. It had got to the point where ‘little Nina’ would have wanted it to happen; I felt like I was doing it for my childhood self and for all the other little Ninas out there who were still suffering. I had a duty beyond any pain it would cause me – but I had no clue of the price I’d be paying.”
Nina made the report in 2016. She subsequently gave a detailed video interview with the police. “It felt good to get it done,” she says. Rather than “overwhelm” her with continual contact, the police suggested they only get in touch when there was progress on the case. “I thought that sounded all right, but then you wait six months, eight months, 10 months, without hearing anything,” says Nina. “What’s going on? You start to wonder: is it OK? Is anything happening? Are they investigating?”
At times, it felt almost as if the move that had seemed so momentous, that had taken all of Nina’s courage, had made no mark or had never happened. “I had no paperwork, not a single letter, nothing at all to show it was on record or in the system other than a crime number that was dictated to me down the phone at some point,” she says.
“The thing that horrifies me is that at the start of each new year, I think, ‘OK, maybe this year, it’ll all be over, something will happen and I can finally put it behind me and get on with my life’ – but it never is. It has been five years now with the police and CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] ping-ponging the case between each other. My stepfather is still living his life without consequences and we haven’t even got to a charging decision.
“It casts a shadow over everything I plan, any choice I make, this feeling that something could happen any time so I have to keep it all top of my mind when all my instincts are telling me not to. My testimony is relying on the fact that I’m remembering something that I’m desperately trying to forget.”
Figures for England and Wales have shown the typical delay between an offence of rape and a resulting criminal case rose to 1,000 days in 2021. According to the Criminal Bar Association, the backlog of trials for sexual offences has risen by 125% in the past three years.
This, of course, shows only the tip of the iceberg, since a fraction of reported sex offences will get to trial – 2.9% resulted in charges in the year to September 2021, according to figures released by the Home Office. (The prosecution rate for rape cases is even lower, at 1.3%.) The 1,000-day wait doesn’t count survivors like Nina, whose case has been languishing for almost double that.
The pandemic is often cited as a cause, but multiple factors have played a part here. “In some ways, Covid feels like a convenient excuse,” says Francesca Jarvis from Rape Crisis South London. “The system was already buckling.”
According to Jarvis, these waiting times are the result of a “perfect storm”. At the legal end, we’ve had a decade of court closures, the defunding of criminal legal aid and the growing shortage of barristers. At investigation stage, the case of Liam Allan at the end of 2017, where a rape trial collapsed because crucial mobile phone evidence had been withheld from the defence, has led to a level of caution in police and CPS that, Jarvis says, “completely changed the landscape”.
Kate Ellis, a solicitor with Centre for Women’s Justice, agrees that the impact of this case on waiting times is “hard to overstate”. It tapped into fears around sexual offences and false allegations, and the police and CPS really came under fire. “Many believe the pendulum quickly swayed too far in the other direction, as investigations now seem very focused on the victim’s credibility, on the police and CPS proactively gathering evidence that may assist the defence – health records, phone records, there’s a huge volume of evidence in a digital age. It has raised difficult questions about where to stop.”
At times in the past five years, Nina has felt more like the suspect than the survivor. “The only ‘updates’ I get are when the CPS ask for something more,” she says. “They asked for my medical records, which I gave them, although I regretted that a little bit as they then started getting really invasive.”
Next, the CPS asked for her mobile phone. “That was a real conundrum,” says Nina. “This happened when I was a child. I don’t have the same phone any more. There’s nothing on my phone that could relate to that period and the idea of allowing the defence, my abuser, to see what my life is like now feels so exposing. The irony is that this is a crime of consent, but the CPS can’t take no for an answer. They asked me three times, and three times I refused. The fourth time, I gave in and we came to an arrangement where they could scroll through. They wanted to confirm that I hadn’t been colluding with my mum. It just feels so violating.”
Oona Brooks, a reader in criminology at Glasgow University, has studied the impact of waiting times on sexual assault survivors as part of a project funded by the Scottish government. She describes a process of “secondary victimisation”. “Sexual assault takes control away from someone and the criminal justice process replicates that sense of powerlessness,” she says. “Survivors describe living in a heightened state of anxiety – awaiting the next update, not knowing what will happen next, wondering if they’re taken seriously, feeling really unimportant.
“They know they may be expected to recall details two, three, even four years later. One male survivor described waking in the night and writing things down so he wouldn’t forget them. Effectively, you’re having to hold on to these details and remain as a ‘victim’ instead of beginning to process them, in order to live your life.”
Therapy for survivors coping with such pressures can be sorely needed, but accessing it is hugely problematic. Case notes can currently be requested by the defence – leaving many survivors feeling unsafe discussing complex feelings around guilt, self-blame and uncertainty in therapy. Rape Crisis is calling for therapy and counselling notes to be made non-disclosable.
Likewise, there are restrictions on what you might say to others, or to whom you can talk at all, which can become increasingly unmanageable as time stretches. Brooks gives the example of a case involving rape in the context of domestic abuse, where a woman’s child might be called to give evidence. “She was concerned about what she could say to her own child, how she could help her child, and answer her questions or if she might be accused of coaching.”
The pressures on daily life are immense. “Most survivors know their attacker,” says Brooks. “It’s likely he will be out on bail. He probably knows the same people, you’ll have friends or family in common, some will take sides. Survivors told me about the accused harassing and intimidating family members. One no longer felt able to use the local shops.”
Monica is part of a multi-victim rape and sexual assault trial that has taken three years to come to court partly because of pandemic-related postponements.
The years have added layers of trauma. Monica isn’t British, her visa has expired since reporting the case and she had to fight for discretionary leave with working rights attached – at one point, forced to live on a grant of £39 a week. “My family have no idea what happened to me,” she says. “My life was like a horror movie and a parent only wants to see that on TV. If I’d gone home, I’d have taken this broken chapter with me. I’d have felt unable to talk to anyone about the case, I’d have no support structures around me, I’d have kept everything hidden – but still it would be hanging over me and I’d have been expected to recall it all and help convict a dangerous man years later when the time came.
“This wait, and the way I’ve been treated have been so difficult,” she continues. “I’m writing a victim impact statement now and the initial outrage about what was done to me has been so clouded and coloured by the years since that it’s difficult to pick it apart and examine on its own.”
Nina feels the same. “I look at my friends moving on with their lives and think: ‘My childhood was stolen from me, but why does my adulthood continue to be taken from me, too?’ I worry about planning anything nice in case something happens with the case to ruin it. I’m supposed to be getting married, but I’m worried I’ll get a call, or news, or a trial date.
“Booking a holiday, starting a new job, starting a family – it’s the same for everything,” she says. “I’d love to have kids, I’m at the point where I’ll shortly be able to do that, but I can’t imagine going through the court process or risk slowing it down with a pregnancy or a baby. I’ve told three different employers about it now, which is ridiculous.”
There have been some moves to speed up the process. But Ellis is dubious about introducing time targets for the investigation stage. “There was a police force piloting them, but it seemed to result in cases not being investigated at all,” she says. “I’d like investigations to be more focused on the suspect and evidence of the offence, rather than so much time being spent investigating the victim. The real problem is resources – at the moment, we have overstretched officers and prosecutors with a massive case load.”
At court level, Brooks supports a radical overhaul. “They’ve introduced some additional courts and digital technology for remote hearings, but that is tinkering around the edges of a system that isn’t working,” she says. Brooks is a keen supporter of proposals to introduce specialist-judge-only sexual violence courts in Scotland – something supported by Rape Crisis as a key step to improve the survivor experience. On 25 February, a joint inspection by police and CPS of the investigation and prosecution of rape cases in England and Wales found poor communication between police and CPS and also with the victims from the point of charge onwards. Its recommendations included the use of specialist rape courts.
In the meantime, it is hardly surprising that crime outcomes for the year ending March 2021 showed that 33% of reported sexual offences were closed, because victims dropped out of the prosecution. There are moments when Nina would also like to walk away, but, as yet, she hasn’t. “I’m not confident that I’ll get to court,” she says. “I’m well aware that anything could happen. One of his friends asked me to withdraw because ‘he’s so old’, and: ‘Does it really make a difference?’
“I’m proceeding because it’s the right thing to do – but with each passing year, his promise that I was never going to see justice for this rings louder.”
• Survivor names have been changed.
• Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
