Only one in 10 rape victims in England and Wales 'would report crime again'

Rape victims in England and Wales have echoed the message of Gisèle Pelicot in France that "shame belongs to perpetrators, not them", in the largest ever survey of rape and sexual assault survivors, according to the government's adviser on the crime.

- Alexandra Topping

Three-quarters of respondents to the survey of rape and sexual assault survivors said their mental health was damaged "as a direct result of what police did, or failed to do, in their case", and only one in 10 said they would report again, according to researchers.

But a radical overhaul of the way the criminal justice system deals with rape since 2021 is showing the first "green shoots" of improving victims' experience of the criminal justice system, with respondents after July last year 8% less likely to report damage to their mental health because of the police.

Only two in five respondents agreed that the police were doing a good job, while one in five said they had been faced pressure from officers to withdraw, with black and minority ethnic survivors having worse experiences than white respondents.

Operation Soteria, which focuses on perpetrators rather than victim behaviour and was fully introduced in 2023, came after a rape review in June 2021 exposed the reasons behind a collapse in rape prosecutions-which in 2016-17 stood at 5,190 and fell 60% in four years to 2,102 in 2019-20, even as reports increased.