Sex assault victims’ 8-year wait for justice
Cases taking 50% longer than before pandemic
SEX attack victims are being forced to wait an average of eight years for justice, shocking figures showed yesterday.
In some areas it takes more than 16 years to put an offender behind bars, with cases now lasting 50 per cent longer than before the pandemic.
The latest Ministry of Justice figures for October to December 2021 show that the average time between a sex attack happening and the trial ending is 2,937 days, which is more than eight years. It also takes 426 days on average from police charging a sex offender to the end of their trial. In 2018 it was 284 days.
The delays cause further distress in cases where the attack may have happened years before the victim felt able to go to the police. Hundreds of trials are also being abandoned every month because of shortages of specialist prosecutors, defence barristers and even judges. Analysis by the Criminal Bar Association reveals that a record 179 trials were ditched last year because no judge was available to preside.
In some cases, women have been left suicidal by the delays and campaigners fear attackers are being left free to claim new victims. Officials insist that more victims of historical sexual offences have had the confidence to come forward, which has led to the average time between offence and case completion rising.
The worst delays are in North Yorkshire where sex assault victims waited an average of more than 16 years from an offence to the conclusion of their case. The equivalent figure was just four years in 2018.
Criminal barristers in England and Wales are due to take industrial action today in protest over levels of legal aid.
Jo Sidhu QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: ‘The perfect storm is already raging across the country as trial delays lengthen because we simply do not have sufficient numbers of judges, prosecutors, and defenders to deal with the backlog.’
The Ministry of Justice is spending £1billion to boost court capacity and accelerate trials post-pandemic.
A spokesman said: ‘We are determined to get victims the swift justice they deserve – that’s why we are increasing court capacity and overhauling our entire response to rape while boosting funding for support services to £185million a year.’