Rape victims must never be forgotten
Top lawyer backs campaign group over bid for justice
SCOTLAND’S top lawyer has met with rape victims to help tackle the low conviction rates in sexual offence cases.
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain QC told the Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday the lack of justice for women in rape and sexual assault cases can’t be ignored.
Bain recently met with founders of the campaign group Speak Out Survivors, to ask them how the justice system could better serve victims.
The women, Suzy Angus, Emma Bryson and Shirley Ross, are all victims of childhood sex abuse and believe the Scottish legal system needs an overhaul over its handling of sexual offences.
It comes as new figures revealed rape survivors are waiting up to 16 months to access vital services.
Figures published on the last day of the parliamentary term shows waiting lists have risen in seven out of 16 areas.
The Scottish Government earlier this year revealed just 43 per cent of cases of rape and attempted rape in 2019-20 resulted in a conviction – compared to an overall rate of 88 per cent for all crimes.
Bain told MSPs: “The conviction rate cannot be ignored and cannot be explained away by the fact that women just cannot be believed.”
Suzy said that the Lord Advocate told them if people stop talking about the horrors of sexual offences, there was a danger of victims being forgotten.
The Scottish Government will launch a consultation in March to establish whether the existing high bar of corroboration in sexual offences cases should be reformed.
Emma said that her own experience of the criminal justice system “had shown me how little justice there really is for survivors of rape.”
She said: “What I learnt was that vast majority of sexual offences in Scotland are never even prosecuted, let alone convicted.” Suzy and Emma gave their stories to Justice Journeys, a Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at Glasgow University.
Suzy was raped as a child by a group of men.
She decided to contact the police 45 years after the attacks and waited 14 months for information on when her case would be progressed.
She was told the complaint had failed to progress due to corroboration requirements.
In Justice Journeys she wrote: “I was at work at the time of that phone call from the police and just about collapsed.” Emma was repeatedly raped as a child aged between 10 and 14 by a family member. She reported the attacks to police when she was 43. But she told Justice Journeys: “In June 2017, I was told by the Crown Office that there was insufficient evidence for corroboration. It was devastating.
“I sat on the floor in my office at home that day and I howled.”
In Grampian, the waiting list was 3-5 months last year, but rose to 6.5 months in 2021. In Ayrshire there was no wait in 2020 – but this year there is a six-month waiting list.
The longest wait is 16 months in the Highlands, up from nine months in 2020.
Labour MSP Monica Lennon said: “People who have taken the courageous step of contacting their local Rape Crisis centre need immediate support.”
SNP Cabinet Secretary Shona Robison said having to wait for support has a real-life impact on rape survivors.
She added: “That is why within the first 100 days of this government, we directed new funding of £5million to Rape Crisis centres and domestic abuse services to help cut waiting lists and in 2020 we invested an additional £5.75million to various organisations including Rape Crisis Scotland.”
The conviction rate cannot be ignored LORD ADVOCATE DOROTHY BAIN