Sex offence victims face six-month wait to go through courts
COMPLAINANTS in cases of sexual violence are seeing unprecedented waits for their cases to go through the courts, new data has revealed.
The figures show some rape and sexual assault cases are taking well over a year to be concluded.
The Ministry of Justice data, obtained by the BBC, shows the average case between July and September last year was 266 days – around nine months – from being opened to concluded. This does not include the time taken for authorities to investigate cases when they are first reported, the majority of which do not result in prosecution.
Hull Crown Court saw a lower
than average wait time for sex offence cases last year, with 189 days – roughly six months – between a defendant first appearing in the docks to being either sentenced or set free upon an acquittal.
Delays have been blamed in part on a huge backlog of criminal cases being heard by the courts due to the Covid-19 pandemic, although barristers have blamed the waits on cuts to the justice system.
Sex offence cases are more complex to prosecute than other crimes and can sometimes require evidence such as private messages, which may be difficult for authorities to obtain.
It follows growing concerns from authorities about the prosecution rate for rape offences over the past four years, which has fallen by about 70 per cent in England and Wales despite increasing numbers of victims coming forwards.
In Humberside, police received 13,930 reports of sexual offences between 2016 and 2021 – including 4,632 rapes – but fewer than 10 per cent of these (1,309) resulted in someone being charged or receiving a court summons.
Fewer than 3 per cent of rape reports investigated by police during this time resulted in a prosecution. Humberside Police, when asked about these figures, said the increase in reports is due, in part, to changes in the way they record crime and better officer training.