Teesside domestic abuse charity: Lengthy court delays causing distress
My Sister's Place say it is causing really serious harm to victims
A Teesside domestic abuse charity says lengthy delays in the court process are leading to huge distress for victims.
Figures show in 2018 it was taking around 85 days for cases to get through the system, last year that shot up to 165 days.
Lesley Storey, chief executive of My Sister's Place in Middlesbrough, said: "It's completely unacceptable. These court delays cause really serious harm to victims. We're talking about mental health impacts and we're certainly seeing an increase in anxiety and mental health issues.
"Some of the things that we're seeing at My Sister's Place are victims who feel they need to have time off work because they're so stressed, so it's causing a real financial impact on victims. For young victims, we're sometimes seeing young women for example who've ended their university courses.
"For some victims, they're getting to court, they've waited for a very, very long period of time and then on the day of the court case it's been adjourned, postponed, further delayed and we've actually got some victims that that's happened to more than once, which is wholly unacceptable.
"Think about it; you turn up at court, you get there, you've built yourself up for this, you believe that this is a day where you're going to get justice and you're turned away. And often victims aren't even given really an acceptable explanation as to why this has happened, there's sometimes double booked courts.
"For victims they're not able to recover from the trauma from what's happened to them while they're waiting one, two, two years plus to get to court, so you can't recover from what's happened to you. You can't recover from that trauma while you're waiting for that court case to happen.
"It's an intolerable situation for lots of victims to be in and we're seeing victims who just don't believe they're going to get justice, and some victims just drop out of the process because they can't really live with that stress and pressure hanging over them."
She is hoping victims of domestic abuse will not be put off and will continue reporting to police and seeking justice.