Disappointment at every turn
These articles are based on the original podcast Less Than 2%, hosted by Jeevan Ravindran, Emma Guy, and Hera Hussain. Research, writing, and additional reporting by Aiman Javed. Edited by Sophie Brown.
You can listen to our podcast here.
Content warning: This article contains discussions of sexual assault, rape, and abuse. Overall, we have tried to avoid graphic and disturbing details.
Read the Introduction to this series and Part I of our investigation here.
“I have had no response to the messages I have sent,” they said. “The support worker has also tried to contact the police woman who was in charge of the case. Also with no response. I understand these things can take time, but I’ve not been able to gain any closure on it, so it just feels like it’s ongoing. I don’t really feel like talking about it to my support worker, because I’m not in a place where I feel like I can move past it.”
When Chayn circulated a survey for survivors last year, one of the responses we got indicated two years had passed since the person reported their rape to the police.
Their interview was video-recorded and they were introduced to a support worker from New Pathways, a rape crisis and support service in Wales. While the worker regularly checked in on them, they hadn’t received any updates about their police case.
To leave a survivor in the lurch makes them feel paralysed. This could be a survivor who has lived through the trauma of an assault, faced coercion in a relationship, and then had to navigate the uncertainty around who is investigating their case and how. More and more people get involved in the investigation, and even though they are the victim, they have to run after each person to explain their story over and over again.
An endless wait
In the middle of an investigation, clear communication from the police can make the survivor feel supported. And technically, the assigned officer is supposed to keep the survivor up to date. But they sometimes fall short and communications are not always sensitively framed.
After her first interview with the police, Jehane, a Chayn volunteer and survivor whose story we shared in Part I, wasn’t given any updates about her case for nearly a year. One year later, the police wanted to redo her interview because the first one had not been conducted properly. In this entire period, they didn’t bother to update her. And meanwhile the rapist was long gone from the country.
A February 2022 review by the Criminal Justice Joint Inspection found that survivors are left confused due to inconsistent and unclear information shared by the investigating officers. And there are delays at every step of the process.
Jessica, 27, first shared her experience with us through our survey. Later, we chatted over Zoom. Sitting on a blue couch, wearing a loose pink sweater and yellow pyjamas, she told us how she reported her assault to the police. Jessica was offered the option to speak to a woman officer. She was taken to what she describes as a “slightly weird house” — in fact, a comfort suite meant to put her at ease — where her testimony was recorded on video. If her case went ahead, the tape would be played in court, so she would not have to face her abuser, a fellow student.
The police force who took Jessica’s case were participating in Operation Bluestone, a programme in Avon and Somerset, designed to redress the poor record police had with rape prosecutions. But the process took its time. “They had to wait three or four months until the end of the summer holidays for the person who assaulted me to come back from his hometown, before they would interview him,” she said. “They interviewed him, then they called me afterwards to let me know they decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, as it was his word against mine. They told me they’d asked him to avoid me, and I should avoid him as well, which seemed like a good idea. But I’ve since felt like I’m not allowed to approach him, which rules out any restorative justice,” Jessica said.
It took months of waiting before the suspect was even interviewed. There are many unanswered questions about what happened during that time: why didn’t the police coordinate with forces in the other part of the country and interview the suspect there? Why didn’t they try to collect additional evidence in the meantime?
The case didn’t go to court but Jessica was determined to seek support in other ways so she sought therapy. But one London-focused report found in 2021, that most survivors drop their complaint within a month of speaking to the police. The intention of Operation Bluestone had been to “reduce the high victim declines to prosecute rates within the city of Bristol.” It’s ironic that instead the police itself did not pursue the case.
Why are survivors dropping complaints? As the experiences of those who spoke to us for this series show, they don’t feel supported when they approach the police. The process is riddled with difficulties and persistently makes them relive the horror of the assault. And the outcome is often disappointing.
No further action
When the police conclude an investigation, they must decide whether to refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). This independent body prosecutes criminal cases already investigated by the police or other agencies. They must ensure the right person is prosecuted for the right crime. As such, they decide if a case will go to court. If it does, they determine the charges, prepare the case, and present it in court.
The police have fairly limited powers because while they can investigate and they can arrest, they can’t pass cases to the CPS for charging advice, without first putting them through a “full code test”. In plain language, this means the case can only move forward if the police believe the suspect is likely to be convicted based on the available evidence and if it’s in the public interest for them to be prosecuted.
A “threshold test” might also be applied, if it’s likely that more evidence will become available in time or the crime is so serious that the case should proceed, even if there is a lack of evidence at present.
For more information about what will happen when reporting to the police and when pursuing legal justice, visit Your Story Matters (YSM).
One of the most disappointing conclusions for a survivor reporting to the police, is a report filed as No Further Action (NFA). This was the conclusion for Jessica’s case.
According to the CPS and Met Prosecutions, an NFA is issued when there is “not enough evidence to send the case to the CPS for them to prosecute and therefore the decision has been made to not take the investigation further, i.e. lack of evidence to proceed with a charging decision.” The full code test has not been met.
According to ACRO, the UK police’s Criminal Records Office, an NFA decision can be made either by the police, by the relevant investigating authority, or a relevant prosecuting authority.
However, it’s important to understand the nuances of this. ACRO states, “it cannot automatically be concluded that a decision to take no further action in any given case exonerates the person arrested of their alleged involvement in a crime that the police are lawfully bound to investigate.” This is different to “no crime,” which refers to “when it has been established by the police that no recordable offence has been committed.”
In other words, an NFA doesn’t mean that a crime has not taken place. It simply means there wasn’t enough evidence for the case to go to court.
The CPS says an NFA should only be issued in a rape case if it can’t meet the “appropriate evidential standard,” — under either the ‘Full Code ’ or the ‘Threshold Test’ — because all lines of enquiry have been pursued and exhausted, or there is no likelihood of further evidence emerging to strengthen the case. There should also be no room for the case to be strengthened through further investigation.
For the survivor, an NFA can feel like reaching a dead end. It is difficult to accept and invalidating. But there’s more to the story of how the police use NFAs in rape cases versus other crimes.
The July 2021 joint inspection report looked at the decisions of the police and the CPS to take no further action in rape cases. It found that they were “more cautious in their approach to investigating and prosecuting rape cases than they are towards other types of offences.” This included requesting unnecessary information or excessive evidence. There was also an “unacceptable” delay in cases, with the average length of time from a report until a case was closed with a CPS-issued NFA being 456 days. The investigators point out that this can affect victims, and that the NFA decision isn’t always communicated with empathy and clarity.
Survivors may use their Victim’s Right to Review (VRR) to challenge this. VRR, a scheme launched in 2013 for the CPS, allows victims to demand a reconsideration of the CPS decisions. A police VRR scheme is also applicable for cases from 2015 onwards.
Though victims can request a review, the report showed that in three quarters of cases, there is no data on whether they had been informed of this scheme or not.
If a review is requested, the case is assessed by a senior staff member, who must look at it with fresh eyes and make the final call. They may uphold or overturn the existing decision, and can decide whether or not to refer the case to the CPS, even if it was previously NFA’d by the police. If upheld, a detective inspector may give further reasons why the case is not moving forward, such as lack of supportive evidence, for example, medical evidence, or no realistic prospect of conviction, such as when some evidence supports the accused, for example, there’s an alibi.
In one-third of NFAs, victims withdraw their cooperation early and the police decide they cannot meet the evidential threshold needed. In some cases, the victims did not want to report in the first place, but in others, the cooperation is withdrawn due to other reasons. The Criminal Justice report suggests that this may be due to police failure to pursue a “victim-centred” approach.
As a survivor-led organisation, we have an important reminder for all survivors: your experiences are real. Even if your case does not go to court. The police may even believe you. Sometimes, it simply means that the police’s investigation was not thorough enough, or that under the present legal framework, your case cannot proceed.
The mysterious early advice
On the CPS website, we found The Director of Public Prosection’s Guidance on Charging from 2020 and The Protocol between the Police Service and CPS in the Investigation and Prosecution of Rape from 2017. These state that any investigating officer should seek “early advice” from a prosecutor in complex cases. It especially mentions rape as an example. However, it’s unclear how often early advice is actually sought or if the police typically make the judgement call themselves.
Of course, there is a close relationship between the CPS and the police, considering that the CPS relies on the evidence collected by police. The CPS does not carry out its own investigation. They will, however, work with the police to make sure the best possible evidence is being gathered — and they can only do this when their advice is sought.
The CPS Rape Strategy update from 2022 states that NFA cases are under greater scrutiny, and police are being encouraged to seek early advice in rape cases. The CPS plans to gather data on early advice to assess its impact. Until this becomes available, we don’t really know whether it leads to more convictions or not. Though the hope is that it does.
Taking the CPS to court
In 2021, a group of women’s organisations, under the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition, which Chayn is also a part of, took the CPS to court.
They lost the case against the CPS but the evidence presented was damning. They had claimed that the CPS covertly changed its policies in a way that encouraged prosecutors to drop weak cases: cases that are difficult to prosecute in front of a jury. EVAW linked this to senior managers being worried about their “performance data.”
The case was the first step in creating an accountability process for these mechanisms. Let’s get it straight. The CPS were setting targets, which means that rape survivors were not getting justice, because they were not being prioritised. Simply because this would have impacted the CPS efficiency goals.
It is worrying, that when the hope is that early advice from the CPS would help rape cases, their involvement may be having the opposite effect.
Rotten to the core
It’s also no secret that policing is having a crisis of trust in the UK.
In October 2021, it was revealed that 2000 allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against serving police officers from 39 forces in the past four years. There are only 43 police forces in the UK. The numbers keep piling up and the accountability is not matching up.
These aren’t isolated incidents of bad behaviour. After the murder of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, police officers took pictures of their bodies at the crime scene. They shared them in a WhatsApp group chat, referring to the women as “dead birds.” One officer edited a picture of his face onto one of the photos.
In February, news circulated of a Whatsapp group chat of police officers from the Charing Cross station, where they joked about beating and raping women.
These are the officers supposed to protect us. This isn’t a coincidence, or “just a few bad apples.”
This is a systemic failure.
According to an investigation by Channel 4 from May 2021, one woman reports a serving police officer for domestic or sexual violence every week. One officer was jailed in November for beating his girlfriend and telling her to lie about her injuries.
Since 2010, almost 800 MET police officers have faced sexual misconduct allegations. With cases like that of Wayne Couzens, the police officer who raped and killed Sarah Everard, survivors are reluctant to trust in the police. In the aftermath, MET police officer, David Carrick and former officer, Stephen Kyere, have been charged for rape as well — indicating that the MET Police is rotten to the core.
Instead of getting their own house in order, looking internally and creating radical change, like better vetting processes, trauma-informed policing, improved training and connecting databases so repeat offenders are caught easily, the police have shared advice about how women should flag down buses to escape police officers.
If the police and prosecutors are failing survivors, what about the other institutions we encounter in everyday life — the reporting systems in place at professional regulators like the General Medical Council, the human resources department at our workplace, or a university’s administrative office?
For survivors who are students, university authorities are often the first official body they report to. Let’s find out if things are different on campus.
In Part III: ’Til it happens to you, we shift the focus to what happens when students report sexual assault to university authorities.
Less than 2% is a project based on facts and real events. However, some names have been changed for legal reasons, including privacy. These articles are accompanying pieces to our podcast. Much of the original wording remains, with additional reporting and research included. We’ve given each story more room to breathe, as well as options for our listeners to interact with the material in different ways.
Our research is based on interviews with survivors, Chayn’s experience supporting survivors since 2013, news sources as well as reports from government institutions and other organisations, which have been clearly linked to and cited in our pieces for transparency.
Bonus content — Legal jargons
During the interview, police ask survivors how and where they were touched, whether they resisted, and more, because they are investigating from a legal standpoint. They want to determine if what happened was rape, assault by penetration, or sexual assault. In everyday language, we use these terms interchangeably.
- Rape in English and Welsh law is the intentional penetration with a penis of another person’s vagina, anus or mouth without their consent. It includes stealthing: when the condom is removed without the other person’s consent. The maximum sentence for rape is imprisonment for life.
- Assault by penetration means that a person has intentionally penetrated the vagina or anus of another person with an object or part of the body other than the penis, without their consent, and without having reasonable belief in consent. The maximum sentence for assault by penetration is imprisonment for life.
- Sexual assault is an “act of physical, psychological and emotional violation” in the form of a sexual act, which might also mean forcing someone to witness or participate in sex. The maximum sentence for sexual assault is 10 years.
Having to explain the abuse in such detail can be incredibly traumatic for survivors. A legal definition is necessary for prosecution but society’s focus shouldn’t be the “who has it worse” approach as that doesn’t help those experiencing harm that isn’t necessarily physical, such as in online, emotional, or financial abuse. “What matters is how you feel and how you need to recover. The fact that I may have not had as bad an experience as someone else doesn’t actually mean anything in terms of the impact on me, the trauma on me, and my recovery,” said Jayne Butler, the CEO of Rape Crisis England and Wales.
Whether a penis or something else was used to commit the crime, the survivor in either case is extremely traumatised. A survivor-centred approach would recognise that the ‘severity’ of the assault for the survivor is what matters.
