“Why are women having to wait years for justice?”: Attorney General visits Sheffield domestic abuse charity
Attorney General Ellie Reeves, who oversees the work of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), visited Sheffield Women’s Aid on Thursday
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The Attorney General has said domestic abuse survivors “deserve to have a system that works for them, not against them” during a visit to Sheffield Women’s Aid.
Attorney General Ellie Reeves, who oversees the work of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), visited Sheffield Women’s Aid on Thursday (September 10) to visit the refuge and hear women’s stories.
She said violence against women and girls has always been her number one priority and something she had been working on for years.
“Just speaking to survivors today at the refuge, it renews my resolve to take this work forward because of their bravery and courage in coming forward,” she said.
“They deserve to be listened to. They deserve to be supported every step of the way and they deserve to have a system that works for them not against them.”
Mikaela*, a survivor at the refuge said the opportunity to speak to the UK’s chief legal adviser made her feel heard.
She came to the refuge after her perpetrator put her in hospital and the staff recognised it as abuse.
She told the Attorney General it took three years to get her perpetrators charged and because of the waiting time, she eventually pulled out as a witness.
“Three years from the act to coming to court, for a woman, life has completely changed,” she said.
“I’m not the person I was three years ago, but I’d have to stand there in court and relive.
“It’s not just the perpetrator on bail, it’s you on bail. It’s you waiting.
“You feel abandoned, you feel alone. You are told to just get on with your life until it goes to court. We can’t give you this support until you’re in court, but you’re not in court for two years, get on with your life.
“Why are women having to wait all these years to get their perpetrator to court?” she asked. “How can we get on with our lives when we’ve got that hanging over us?”
She said the main reason she pulled out was because of her son.
“In that time, he’d gone from being a young child, to somebody who would have seen me taking his dad away. If his dad had been found guilty and gone to prison, it would have been me destroying my child’s life.”
She also wants to see support continue after moving out of the refuge into independent living.
She left the refuge at the same time as four other women but says she is the “only lucky one” who hasn’t turned back to their perpetrator, or turned to drugs or alcohol.
“The women in the refuge know you. Why can’t your support worker from the refuge carry on for those few months?”
She also wants to see children better supported.
“Because of the offences, I got given a domestic violence advisor. Why couldn’t my child have been given somebody to talk to?
“They know that they’ve lived in refuge. Why can’t there be somebody else who checks on them once a month? Why is there nothing for them?
The Attorney General said she wants to make sure that the CPS is fully supporting women.
She said: “I’ve secured funding for a pilot, which will mean the survivors of domestic abuse are offered a meeting with the prosecution team before the case gets to the Crown Court and get a dedicated victim liaison officer from within the CPS so that they feel supported through that criminal justice process.
She said Yorkshire is one of the three areas for the pilot, and she’d also rolled out ‘early victims right to review’ nationally.
She explained: “Where the CPS is considering dropping a rape case after charges have been bought, in the past, what happened is that the CPS would drop a case and that would be the end of it.
“The defendant would be acquitted, and all a survivor could do was request a right to review after the event. But even if it was found, the CPS got it wrong, the case couldn’t be reinstated. There was nothing that could be done. I wanted to change that.
“Now in rape cases, survivors can have the right to have that review before the final decision is taken. So the CPS is considering dropping a rape case, the survivor can request that to be looked at by an independent second prosecutor before a final decision has been taken.
“What we’ve seen through that pilot is that there are rape cases that have gone forward that would otherwise have stopped and wouldn’t have got to court.”
Chief Executive Hollie Venn said it was fantastic to be able to share the work of Sheffield Women’s Aid with the UK’s chief legal advisor.
“It’s really lovely for us as a small charity, to have our work championed and selected for a visit,” she said.
“Having those with their own lived experience meeting the Attorney General, it’s really powerful.
“We can talk as an organisation about what we do, but actually meeting survivors and their children paints a really different story.
“What has been really valuable today is for us to be able to talk about and relay what works well for survivors, but also actually what hasn’t quite worked so well, because
“The Attorney General is in a really key position to be able to feed that back and actually make national strategic change and policy change, that as a small charity would be out of reach for us ordinarily.”
*Name changed for anonymity
If you are at risk of domestic abuse, call 999 or find support within services available.