July 9th 2023.
The majority of rape victims don't report it to the police, which is why campaigners are saying that the government has been too quick to claim the support for them has improved.
Ministers have said that there has been “significant progress” made to ensure better support for victims, and a recent progress report from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice shows that they have met two key ambitions ahead of schedule.
These two ambitions were to restore both the number of police referrals and cases reaching court to 2016 levels.
In order to further this progress, all 43 police forces in England and Wales and all rape prosecutors are now implementing a new approach called Operation Soteria. This approach has already been adopted by 19 police forces and the report says there are “early signs of improvements” in those areas.
Despite this progress, Andrea Simon—director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition—has also said: “The government have been too quick to claim that they’ve tangibly changed the justice system for rape survivors. We’re barely off the starting blocks, but we now have a roadmap which is going to need a lot of support to realise its ambitions. It still remains the case that the vast majority of rape survivors don’t report to the police, and the majority who do will leave the system altogether due to the barriers to justice they find themselves up against.”
The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has expressed that “as a society, too often we have failed the victims of sexual violence”, and the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Alex Chalk KC has said that “we must transform the way these investigations are handled, to make sure all victims have the best support possible throughout the entire process.”
Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, and Steve Reed, the shadow Justice Secretary, have come forward and said that “the next Labour government will introduce rape courts and specialist rape investigation units in every police force. That’s how we will speed up justice and punish rapists.”
Ultimately, the government needs to make sure that action to address sexual violence looks beyond the criminal justice system and prioritises prevention work with young people in schools and through wider public information campaigns. This is the only way to ensure that the majority of survivors who do not report to the police are taken into consideration and have justice done.
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