Rape victims and survivors still failed by the system say charities

Despite marginal progress, charging, prosecution and conviction rates still fall short of the government’s own targets a review has found.

Two years on from the government’s End-to-End Rape Review, far too many victims and survivors of rape continue to be failed, according to a new report released today by Centre for Women’s Justice, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Rape Crisis England & Wales.

The Government’s Rape Review arose following a catastrophic decline in rape prosecutions which dropped to the lowest on record and led women’s groups to declare the effective decriminalisation of rape. In the Review, the government acknowledged that victims of rape are being failed, made an unprecedented apology to victims and survivors and committed to a series of actions to address this problem, in a timeframe leading up to June 2023.

Today’s report is in effect an assessment of the government’s progress in achieving the aims of its Rape Review Action Plan by this coalition of women’s groups. Their overall conclusions are not encouraging:

• Despite marginal progress, charging, prosecution and conviction rates still fall short of the government’s own targets
• Rape scorecards, designed to improve transparency and accountability, are difficult to use effectively and still fail to incorporate and analyse different demographics of victims within the criminal justice system
• There is ongoing failure to better understand who does and does not access the criminal justice system and further investigate the experiences of Black and minoritised victim-survivors
• Much hope rests in the implementation of Operation Soteria, but its progress is threatened by uncertainty around future funding and ongoing academic input
• The government must use the legislative opportunity of the Victims and Prisoners Bill to deliver improvements in the criminal justice system’s treatment of rape survivors
• There remains a lack of political commitment to preventing rape and sexual abuse in the first place and exploring what victims and survivors want to support their recovery.

Some progress but…

The report does recognise some ‘green shoots’ of positive change in several areas, such as the establishment of a 24/7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line, steps towards specialist rape courts, and a reduction in the length of time some forces retain victims’ mobile phones. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion is that the reality remains dire for far too many women and girls who have been the victims of rape. The report highlights a number of concerns including:

• Underfunded specialist support services,
• Routinely and unnecessarily invasive investigations of victims,
• Persistent low levels of perpetrators being charged, and
• Extensive court backlogs which prolong trauma and delay justice.

The report says that for Black and minoritised victims and survivors, the situation is even  worse – and that the government has not demonstrated a commitment to addressing this. The women’s organisations argue that the scale of the change needed requires much more effort and ongoing investment which will rely on long-term political will, leadership and scrutiny, currently mainly noted by its absence.

Recommendation 

The report is published now in the hope that some of its recommendations can be incorporated into the Victims and Prisoners Bill currently going through parliament. The report focuses on three issues in particular.

Protections for victims’ therapy records

Victims and survivors of rape who have reported their crime to the police are often put in an impossible position, forced to choose between seeking justice and seeking therapeutic support in the knowledge that therapy records are often requested by the defence. The report calls for a presumption of non-disclosure of therapy records so that victims can get help and pursue justice at the same time.

Independent legal advice

The report says that people reporting rape are still facing disproportionate requests for personal data from their phone and social media records which impacts directly on the numbers of victims withdrawing from the legal process. The report calls for independent legal advice to help challenge disclosure and for the protection of therapy records which we have cited above.

A firewall between statutory services and immigration enforcement

The report details how insecure immigration status is often a tool of control used by perpetrators to abuse their partners and threat them with deportation. This situation put migrant women in a vulnerable position: they fear their abuser but also fear asking for help. The current lack of safe-reporting mechanisms creates a barrier for migrant women to flee violence and gives greater impunity to perpetrators. The report calls for a firewall between these two parts of the system so that women in this situation can report abuse without the fear of being deported.

You can read the full report here