"I feel more traumatised by the police than by the assault"

05:55 |

If someone forwarded you this email you can subscribe.

Hi Cintila,

Police forces in England and Wales are quietly closing the majority of rape and sexual assault reports without taking further action.

We can now reveal that between January 2024 and July 2025, 59% of rape cases, 56% of sexual assaults by penetration, and 64% of sexual assaults were dropped due to evidential difficulties or because officers deemed them not in the public interest.

It's a stark snapshot of a system failing survivors at every turn.

FEATURED STORY

Police take 'no further action' in more than half of rape reports

Sian Norris

TRIGGER WARNING - DESCRIPTION OF MEDICAL SEXUAL ASSAULT

"I have lived 53 years without being sexually assaulted, and then it happens to me in a hospital, in a place where I am supposed to be safe." Diana* paused. "But in the end, I feel more traumatised by the police than by the assault. Which is ridiculous. Everything they did, they did wrong."

Diana told openDemocracy how a consultant sexually assaulted her twice by inserting a medical instrument into her vagina just before she underwent a routine procedure that did not involve any sort of vaginal examination.

"I was fully awake. I went into shock. It was so surreal, and then it happened a second time, but with much more force and much deeper. I realised at that point, this is intentional, it felt practised. I didn't know what to say, I totally froze," she said.

Her doctor, meanwhile, was "cool as a cucumber, before and after".

Shocked and distressed, Diana reported the incident to her local police force, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary. Initially, she was hopeful that the police would help her: the first officer she spoke to encouraged her to go ahead with a prosecution, and the officer assigned to her case promised to "investigate everyone".

Instead, the police took "no further action". Officers never even interviewed her alleged attacker.

Now, openDemocracy can reveal that between 1 January 2024 and 31 July 2025, an average of 59% of rape cases, 56% of sexual assaults by penetration, and 64% of sexual assaults were closed by police forces in England and Wales without any further action being taken due to evidential difficulties or because they were not deemed to be in the public interest.

This data is based on responses to Freedom of Information requests from 22 of the 43 police forces across England and Wales. The remaining 21 forces either failed to respond to our FOI request or provided limited or unusable data, which prevented us from making a fair comparison. We also did not include cases where no further action was taken because the suspect died, was too ill to give evidence or was charged or summonsed over an alternate offence, or where another public body or agency assumed control of the case.

Our investigation comes as the Angiolini inquiry, set up in response to the rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer in 2021, found that police are not giving sex offences the same response as other high-priority crimes, with more than a quarter of forces having failed to establish basic policies for investigating them.

Will you help defend democracy?

A world in turmoil needs fearless, independent investigative journalism that can overcome censorship and hold power to account.

That's the kind of media you deserve – and you can support it when you donate to openDemocracy today. When you give today, you can:

Keep openDemocracy free to read for everyone
Provide our team with the support they need to work safely in a dangerous world
Deliver the reporting that matters to you – and that reaches as many people as possible

Please support independent non-profit journalism by donating today.

Please donate now

Hampshire police, which investigated Diana's allegations, took no further action in 75.7% of rape reports, 67.7% of sexual assault with penetration reports, and 75% of sexual assaults, due to evidential issues or lack of public interest.

Like so many survivors, Diana's motivation for reporting her sexual assault had been to protect other women. She felt a duty of care, believing the assault had been so practised that the consultant may have other victims. Almost a year and a half later, he is still practising medicine.

"The whole thing was almost pointless," she told openDemocracy. "I can understand why a lot of women don't bother reporting sexual offences. There was a lack of understanding of safeguarding. This guy was doing intimate exams every day. There was no urgency. It is just unbelievable. The victim is not believed again, and the perpetrator is a powerful man who is allowed to carry on as if nothing has happened."

'They believed everyone else but not me'

From the very start, Diana said, the police made her feel that she "was under suspicion".

"I felt there was a dismissiveness, an attitude of disbelief," she said. Despite her clear recollection of the abuse, the police told Diana via a phone call that they were closing the investigation. That was when she learnt officers had decided not to interview the suspect after reviewing two statements by nurses present at the procedure.

"I said that was crazy," Diana recalled. The shock and distress were so severe that Diana had suicidal thoughts. "I felt like my legs had gone. If I had not been able to reach my husband by phone, I don't know what would have happened."

In response to a formal complaint by Diana, which openDemocracy has seen, Hampshire police said that "upon receiving accounts from the witnesses (nurses), it was not deemed necessary to interview [the suspect]. This was because the witness accounts were sufficiently detailed and differed from your recollection of events."

Throughout her evidence, Diana was clear that the sexual assault took place while she was still covered by a blanket, which would be pulled down to commence the procedure. Because the blanket was in place, the nurses would not have had a clear view of the incident, she said.

"The police say the nurses' statements contradicted my own as they had full sight of the procedure and they observed nothing untoward," Diana said. "However, I have made clear on numerous occasions that the assault occurred before the procedure started. As far as I am concerned, there are no inconsistencies."

When Diana pointed this out again in her complaint, the police responded: "I completely appreciate your position that the nurses would not be able to see due to the modesty blanket, but I can confirm both the Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspector who reviewed this case, and agreed to take no further action, were aware that you had stated the blanket obscured the nurses view when they made their decision."

"They are saying they believed the nurses over me," said Diana. "It's going back to not believing victims. They believed everyone else, but not me."

Foreign interference is a major problem in British politics — and our weak lobbying laws are partly to blame.

That's why our friends at Democracy for Sale, founded by former openDemocracy editor Peter Geoghegan, are working with campaigners 38 Degrees to push for urgent change. More than 14,000 people have supported their petition already. Will you sign too?

More shocking news was to come: the police had not only failed to interview Diana's alleged attacker, but had also failed to interview the nurses.

Instead, officers relied on the statements that the two nurses submitted to the hospital's HR department as part of an internal investigation into the allegations, according to the response to her complaint and a Subject Access Request (a formal request that any person can make to a company or public body to obtain any personal data that it holds about them) that Diana submitted to Hampshire police with openDemocracy's support.

"The police could have scrutinised their accounts more if they had spoken to them instead of relying on HR statements from the hospital," she said.

Failing to interview the suspect under caution means Diana cannot request a victim's right to review, where a victim can challenge a decision not to prosecute a case.

Nine police forces told openDemocracy that between 1 January 2024 and 31 July 2025, they received a combined total of 222 requests for a victim's right to review after an investigation into a rape, 40 requests after an investigation into sexual assault with penetration, and 22 after a sexual assault investigation. Around 80% of right-to-review cases are upheld. The remaining 34 police forces did not respond to our Freedom of Information request.

Responding to these figures, Diana said: "I'm worried that police forces are avoiding interviewing suspects in order to thwart increasing numbers of right to reviews by victims.

In her complaint to Hampshire police, Diana raised 10 issues with the way the force treated her. These included officers regarding her with suspicion, wrongly telling her that "everyone" involved would be investigated, failing to discuss before her witness video interview any special measures to accommodate her disabilities, which make it painful for her to sit for prolonged periods of time, and the poor communication from the officer in charge.

Diana's video interview was so short that she left feeling "they had already made their mind up not to proceed with my case". It was then incorrectly summarised on the police system by the investigating officer, a trainee, who wrote: "The blanket was pulled down when the incident occurred." This account wrongly repeated the nurse's statement rather than Diana's testimony.

The investigating officer has since apologised for this "misinterpretation".

In total, of the 10 issues Diana raised in her complaint, the force found that its treatment of her was "not acceptable" in five. On a sixth issue, Diana's allegation that she was treated with suspicion, the force was unable to determine whether the treatment she received was acceptable or not.

The officer who conducted Diana's video interview is now under performance review, although Diana was keen to emphasise that she found it unfair that it was a junior, female, ethnic minority member of staff facing sanctions, not her management.

'The whole thing was pointless'

As well as reporting her assault to the police, Diana made complaints to the hospital, and the General Medical Council (GMC), the body responsible for good, safe patient care across the UK.

Is MAGA a religion? Why has protest been criminalised in England and Wales? Who is profiting from anti-immigration sentiment? And how can we engage with young men who've fallen down the alt-right pipeline?

These are just a few of the questions that we've put to leading thinkers, frontline activists, and global experts on our new podcast, In Solidarity, over the past six months.

In Solidarity is a podcast for people who understand that politics doesn't just happen in the halls of power. Every show, we tackle a new theme to uncover how authoritarianism spreads, who is benefiting from fear, and how solidarity is evolving into resistance movements around the world.

To ensure you never miss an episode of In Solidarity, subscribe to get an email notification whenever a new one is released.

Subscribe to episode notifications

The hospital never informed Diana of its internal investigation's outcome. Speaking to openDemocracy, Diana raised concerns about how the nurses had spoken about her in their evidence. "One implied I had made the claim of sexual assault because I was unhappy I had to wait too long for the procedure," she said. "I wasn't unhappy at all."

The nurse also wrote how Diana seemed "strange", disregarding how she was nervous and feeling ill. She does not see why the nurse's perception of her personality should have any bearing on her allegation of sexual assault.

Diana is still awaiting the results of the GMC investigation, which has been delayed for over a year due to the need to wait for the police to conclude their inquiries and her complaint.

"I have had to wait a year, and I have to go over it again," she said. 'The assault happened in August 2024! Going over it again is triggering, it is retraumatising, I felt like I had moved on and now I had to go back into it."

Diana also told openDemocracy of her worries that sexual assault victims are being priced out of justice. Despite a solicitor advising her that she has a strong case to take legal action against Hampshire police, Diana does not qualify for legal aid.

"It seems to me the whole criminal justice system is rigged against victims and supports only those who can afford it," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's clear sexual assault has effectively been decriminalised in the UK. I would never report a sexual assault to the police again."

In a statement, Hampshire police said: "It takes immense courage for anyone to report they have been a victim of a sexual offence, and we would always expect our officers to show empathy and compassion during an investigation."

Speaking about Diana's case, the force said: "When this report was made, a full interview was conducted with the victim to establish the nature of the allegations, and to identify lines of enquiry. This resulted in the obtaining of statements from witnesses, including members of staff, and the securing of other evidence in order to determine how to proceed.

"Unfortunately, having reviewed the evidence available, we were not able to present a case which met the required evidential threshold and therefore had to close the case, with no further action taken.

"This decision was reviewed as part of a subsequent complaint, where it was found the investigation was of the required standard.

"In this case, we do accept that we could have done more to ensure the victim fully understood why we were unable to submit the case to the Crown Prosecution Service. We have ensured that those involved in the investigation have been provided with feedback to ensure this learning informs our future practice and enhances the support we provide to victims of crime."

In response to our findings, chief constable Sarah Crew, the lead for adult rape and sex offences at the National Police Chief's Council, referred to reforms introduced as part of Operation Soteria, a programme created in 2021 to transform the way police investigate rape and sexual violence.

"Operation Soteria's core principles," she said "are victim-centred, suspect-focused and context-led, which means investigations are no longer driven by judgements about a victim's credibility. Instead, officers focus on scrutinising a suspect's behaviour and the wider context of the offence, actively seeking corroborating evidence such as digital material, patterns of behaviour, witness accounts and scene evidence wherever possible."

Crew added reforms include "the introduction of robust No Further Action Scrutiny Panels, where senior officers and independent partners review rape investigations to ensure decisions are lawful, proportionate and free from bias. These reviews exist to challenge practice, identify learning and strengthen future investigations, particularly in cases where victims have supported prosecution but evidential difficulties remain."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Sexual violence of any type is a despicable crime, and we recognise the unimaginable harm it causes to survivors as well as the whole of society. We are committed to ensuring that victims of sexual violence receive the support they deserve and perpetrators are brought to justice.

"Our upcoming violence against women and girls strategy will support our mission to halve it within a decade. Decisions to take no further action are operational ones taken by the police."

*Names have been changed