Senior judge pledges to end two-year court wait for rape victims

Lord Justice Edis says ‘unacceptable’ delays for victims, witnesses and defendants are a ‘serious stain’ on criminal justice system

Judges have pledged to end two-year court waits for rape victims to gain justice.
Lord Justice Edis, one of Britain’s most senior judges, said he aims to clear the backlog of rape cases delayed more than two years by the end of this summer – and then ensure no rape victim has to wait more than two years after that point.
He described the court delays of more than two years – and in one case five years – as a “serious stain” on the criminal justice system and “unacceptable” for victims, witnesses and defendants.
“It’s a step in trying to make sure that rape cases don’t get this old in the future,” said Lord Justice Edis, who is the senior presiding judge for England and Wales.
There are 181 cases, as of the end of last year, who have waited more than two years for a trial date, on top of the time their complaint had been investigated by police before prosecutors decided to charge a suspect.
Lord Justice Edis said this represented about 6 per cent of the total 3,355 rape cases awaiting trial. The average wait for a rape victim between their case being sent for trial and a verdict being delivered is 358 days.
However, the 181 victims who were entering their third year waiting for the trial were caught by a double “shock” caused to the criminal justice system in 2020 by the pandemic closing down courts, and then in the summer of 2022, as their cases were relisted, by the industrial action by criminal barristers.
“They are approaching their third anniversary. This is an unacceptable state of affairs from the point of view of the complainants, the witnesses, the defendants and justice generally,” said Lord Justice Edis. “This is an initiative designed to get rid of what is a serious stain on our system, which is the age of some of these rape cases.”
Their trials will be prioritised over other cases, which could mean some are delayed “a short period of time”. Judges, barristers and court staff will “red flag” the cases so that pre-hearings can be fast-tracked, dates set for the trials and all parties agree to a fixed date for the hearing.
Lord Justice Edis set a target date of July 31 to clear the backlog but admitted a “few” may not be completed. In one case, a defendant on bail has gone abroad and is believed to be dead though this is yet to be confirmed. Another who also went abroad is claiming to be ill, which prevents him from being tried in his absence.
One victim has been waiting since May 2019 to see her two assailants brought to justice in a retrial. It is now listed for May 2024.
Court delays, combined with low police conviction rates and fears over the trauma of reliving the crime in court, have contributed to more than two-thirds of rape victims withdrawing from investigations.
Lord Justice Edis said the crown courts were operating at a capacity beyond pre-Covid levels, with judges expected to sit 107,000 days this year, compared with 87,000 before the pandemic. “The system has recovered its ability to be productive remarkably well but that still gives us this big backlog of cases,” he said.
He suggested it could be extended to other areas as he called for “planning, investment and long-term thinking” to restructure the court estate to ensure there was enough capacity in the right places to meet the growing demand for trials.