Category: Victims in the justice system

Dame Vera Baird said most worrying was Home Office data showing 30 per cent of victims withdrew reports of rape within three months, suggesting their experience had been so bad and traumatic that they could not go through with the prosecution.

To mark the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, we publish the full transcript of the Victims' Commissioner's speech to police earlier this year, where Dame Vera Baird urged policing to lead the way on much-needed cultural change.

New quarterly Crown Prosecution Service data shows that in the last 12 months just 41 extra suspects were charged compared with the year before.

Dame Vera Baird endorses HMICFRS call for urgent and fundamental cross-system change to tackle an epidemic of violence against women and girls.

Responding to the report's findings, the Victims' Commissioner said: "we must not set a precedent whereby defendants are able to use the stresses of lockdown as a justification or defence for killing," as she warned agencies to be "hyper-alert to any form of 'Covid blaming.'"

"To create a system that provides real protection for victims, there needs to be better effective enforcement of breaches of bail," says Victims Commissioner as she calls for breaches of pre-charge bail to be made a criminal offence.

Marking 35 years since the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, the Victims' Commissioner looks at the statistics around stalking during the pandemic.

Victims’ Commissioner criticises the CPS as she says "it is hard to see even the green shoots of a recovery" in rape prosecutions.

In her 2020/21 Annual Report, Dame Vera Baird reflects on the government's end-to-end rape review.

In her 2020/21 Annual Report, Dame Vera Baird reflects on the Crown Court backlog of cases and its impact on victims.