Supporting Rape Crisis England & Wales and the Centre for Women’s Justice Campaigns

At Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland, we are proud to support the vital campaigns led by Rape Crisis England & Wales and The Centre for Women’s Justice, calling for urgent reform within the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Survivors deserve safety, dignity, and justice yet too often, they are met with disbelief, delays, or denial. These campaigns shine a light on the systemic failures that continue to let survivors down, and push for real, lasting change. Below you can find out more about these campaigns and how you can support them.

Bad Experiences, Not Bad Character

We stand with Rape Crisis England & Wales in calling for urgent reform to the law that allows previous, unrelated experiences of sexual violence to be used against survivors in court. Many survivors face repeated sexual violence throughout their lives, but instead of this being recognised as part of a wider reality of gendered harm, it is sometimes used to undermine their credibility. Survivors can be asked to recount previous traumas in court, in front of a jury, in cross-examination designed to portray them as having ‘bad character’.

Even when there is no reason to believe a previous disclosure was false, survivors can find themselves interrogated about past experiences, often without warning. The result is traumatising and can have a chilling effect on whether survivors choose to pursue justice at all. These tactics ignore the fact that one in two survivors of rape have experienced sexual violence more than once, a tragic but well-documented reality. Judges are applying these rules inconsistently, and in some cases, police and the CPS are even dropping cases before trial, anticipating that these past disclosures will be used against survivors in court.

This campaign calls for changes to section 100 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, so that previous experiences of sexual violence can only be mentioned in court where there is clear, reliable evidence that the past disclosure was false. Survivors should never be on trial for speaking up. They deserve to be treated with dignity, not suspicion.

Years Too Long: don’t keep survivors waiting for justice

Rape Crisis England & Wales’ Years Too Long campaign highlights a devastating reality: survivors of rape are waiting an average of more than two years for their cases to go to court, and often much longer. Many report that their court dates have been delayed multiple times, forcing them to relive their trauma over and over again while justice is repeatedly deferred. This is more than an inconvenience, for some, it has led to serious mental health crises and feelings of hopelessness, with survivors telling us they feel unable to move on with their lives.

The reasons for this crisis are complex but solvable. The Crown Court system is buckling under the weight of a growing backlog, with nearly 5,200 rape cases currently awaiting trial. Cuts to legal aid, poor pay for barristers, and a shortage of judges have all contributed to a system in chaos. The situation worsened during the pandemic, which courts were unprepared for, and has not improved since. These long waits aren’t just statistics, they represent people trying to heal while stuck in limbo, with their lives on hold.

This campaign calls for urgent government action: investing in legal professionals, ending court delays, and ensuring survivors aren’t retraumatised by an unfit system. You can take action today by emailing your MP, spreading awareness online, signing up to the Rape Crisis newsletter, or donating to support their essential work.

Lengthy policee investigations into sexual offences: Survivor Survey

This survey is aimed at survivors of sexual offences who have reported to the police. This survey will ask you about your experiences of very long-running police investigations into sexual offences. By very long running, we mean 3 years or more, before a decision was made by the police or CPS on whether to charge the perpetrator, or close the case.

Please don’t worry if you don’t know the exact length of time your case was investigated for. This can be hard to keep track of, but if you think it was over 3 years-please do take part and just give us your best idea of how long this was. The information you provide will be used by Rape Crisis England and Wales, Centre for Women’s Justice, Bindmans and Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre, as evidence to support a ‘super-complaint’ around very long running Police investigations into sexual offences. We may use quotes from your answers, but will not identify you or your case in any way.

What is a super-complaint?

Victims’ Right of Review Pilot

We’re proud to support Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) and the introduction of a vital new pilot scheme that finally addresses a long-standing gap in justice for survivors of rape and serious sexual violence. Until now, the Victims’ Right of Review (VRR) allowed survivors to challenge decisions to drop cases, but even when reviews found serious errors, it was too late. Once the CPS had already offered “no evidence” in court, cases could not be reopened, leaving survivors with nothing more than an apology. This new pilot allows a review before that decision is finalised, meaning errors can be corrected in time, and prosecutions can still go ahead.

This development is thanks to the tireless campaigning of survivors like Jade Blue, who bravely waived her anonymity to speak out after the CPS dropped her case and admitted it had made a mistake, but could do nothing to fix it. Her experience, shared in the BBC documentary Sexsomnia – Case Closed, laid bare the devastating emotional toll these procedural failures can have. Her courage, combined with expert advocacy by CWJ, Dame Vera Baird, and Victim Support, has helped bring about this meaningful shift in policy.

CWJ has supported dozens of survivors through the VRR process and continues to push for a fairer, more just system. This pilot is an important step, but survivors still need clear information, fast access to legal advice, and a system that centres their rights from the very start.

To our local MPs

We are writing to you from Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland to express our strong support for Rape Crisis England & Wales’s Bad Experiences Not Bad Character campaign and to urge your backing for this essential call for justice reform.

At present, when a person reports being raped, their previous disclosures of sexual violence, no matter how unrelated or how long ago, can be used against them in court as supposed ‘bad character’ evidence. This is an appalling injustice.

Instead of being protected by the legal system, survivors are often re-traumatised and discredited. They are being cross-examined in front of juries about past abuse, sometimes with no warning, and without any suggestion that those past disclosures were false. This practice reinforces disbelief, blame, and stigma at the very moment survivors need protection and truth.

Even worse, some police and CPS decisions not to prosecute cases are based on the assumption that previous reports of abuse might be used against a survivor in court. This shows how deeply this harmful tactic is affecting survivors’ access to justice at every level of the criminal legal process.

The inconsistency in how Section 100 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is applied by judges is leading to unpredictable and damaging outcomes. Survivors are not on trial. They deserve justice.

We join Rape Crisis England & Wales, Centre for Women’s Justice, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Rights of Women in calling for clear and robust legal reform:

• Changes to Section 100 so that earlier disclosures of sexual violence can only be raised in court if there is clear and reliable evidence they were false.
• National guidance for judges, police and the CPS to stop this injustice.

We urge you to stand with survivors by supporting this vital campaign. We would be grateful for a response outlining how you plan to support these changes and would welcome the opportunity to meet and discuss this further.

Yours sincerely,
Abby Traynor
Chief Executive Officer
Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland