In today's episode of the Sky News Daily podcast, Tamara Cohen speaks to two women who waited years for trials to take place after reporting sex offences, and asks the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab what can be done for court cases to be heard sooner.
In 2018, Lisa, whose name we have changed, was in her mid-30s and doing well at work when she contacted the police to report being sexually assaulted as a child.
"By the time he was even charged, my mental health had gotten significantly worse. I really was battling with thoughts of is life worth living," she told me. "I wrote to the judge at this point and said, 'I feel like I'm really on trial. I don't see why any victim of crime actually needs to be made to wait years and years and years'."Her abuser was eventually jailed for 18 months - and was released this year, after serving nine.
In early 2019, while doing her GCSEs she worked up the courage to report being sexually assaulted by a religious teacher as a young child."My parents wanted me and my siblings to learn more about our religion and they hired a Koran teacher to come to our house," she told me.The abuse"was very frequent", she said.
It was cancelled on the week of the trial - with no reason given - a blow in the run-up to school exams. Her father wrote to the court to say continuing with the case, and the ongoing impact on the family, felt like"a war of attrition"."Of course, I'm happy he was found guilty," Amina said."But I actually did regret coming forward because it just felt like maybe it would have been easier for me to heal if I had never said anything.
"No, of course it isn't," he said."And my heart goes out to anyone who has not just been the victim of rape or serious attack, but then has had the courage on top of that to go through the ordeal of their trauma, the stress of going through the criminal justice system. "We're putting in £477m over three years to improve waiting times," he said, which are"going in the right direction".
The justice secretary says his priority is to change the mindset of the system which too often does not put victims first - something none of my interviewees would disagree with.
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