#122 Legal Advocacy for Rape Survivors with Dr Olivia Smith

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Dr Olivia Smith is calling for a national system of legal advocacy, after publishing a report that aims to improve sexual offence victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system.

In this episode of the FiLiA podcast, Dr Smith, a lecturer in criminology & social policy at Loughborough University talks to FiLiA volunteer Gemma Aitchison about her campaign for independent legal representation for survivors of all serious sexual offences in England and Wales so that all victims of rape and sexual offences are given free access to a lawyer who can advise and represent them at important points in the criminal justice process.

Follow the campaign on Instagram @needisclear

Follow Dr Olivia Smith on Twitter

Sign the petition.

Visit the campaign page.


Transcript:

GA:  Hi Olivia, I'm Gemma from Yes Matters and from FiLiA, and today, I got some information about an absolutely brilliant and very much needed campaign that you know all about and I thought that some other women would really like to know all about it too. So, first of all, can I ask, who are you?

OS:  Thank you. So, I'm Olivia Smith, I am a lecturer in criminology for whatever that means, at Loughborough University, and I've been researching sort of, criminal justice, legal responses to violence against women and particularly around sexual violence and abuse, for the last, gosh, 10 years now. And as part of that I've been arguing for some legal reforms that feel like they're never going to happen and then something just seems to have clicked and there seems to be a real chance in the sort of, next 12 months that we could really try to make a really, it feels inadequate but a particular difference, and I'd love to, so I'm just really grateful to be able to tell people about it. Thank you. 

GA:  Well there's, there's definitely been a lot about violence against women and girls in the legal world at the moment. So, the End Violence Against Women coalition are taking the CPS to judicial review, um, on changing how they deal with rape cases, which they denied but now they've admitted, which is more perpetrator behaviour, so that's kind of worrying and so today, the press has brought out that Greater Manchester Police aren't dealing with crimes very well either and haven't been registering a lot of things, in particular, crimes against women, such as stalking and harassment. And I suppose many feminists for a long time, will have taken note that, you know, sexual objectification has sort of had the impact that crimes against women and girls, haven't been taken seriously. They're all called isolated incidents and ultimate thing that tied to that it's men are not allowed to talk about that because it upsets them a lot.  So it's really important that these things are joined up, and that society takes women's voices more seriously. Definitely. So, although I know all about it, listeners won't, so tell me about the brilliant stuff that you've been up to.

OS:  I don't know where to start, there's, you know, you're just like, oh, what have I been doing?  Suddenly having a crisis of, yeah, knowledge, um, so I was part of my sort of latest bit of work, I've been evaluating a pilot scheme that was tested in Newcastle primarily in Northumbria, um, that provided a sort of slightly different type of support to people who were reporting rape, um, and so whereas ISVAs and Rape Crisis and all those great organisations, offer emotional support and practical support, give information about the justice system and really help people out sort of make it through the justice system. Actually, there isn't a lot of support for people who are going through this, actually inside the system of, from the sort of legal profession themselves.  Partly because it's often part of the problem rather than really being a solution. But what I found in this evaluation was that actually providing some form of legal support for survivors of rape was really powerful at helping them feel like they weren't alone within the justice system. Because there was somebody who could take on the sort of admin of writing emails to the police of challenging the police and saying, but why is this certain evidence relevant or, why are you asking those questions at the interview, which the current system of support that we have in the rest of England and Wales, can't do, because they can't sit in on the ABE interview, they can't see the evidence, whereas because these were qualified lawyers, they were allowed to see the evidence. They were allowed to have confidential conversations with survivors so the survivors could say, I'm worried about my phone it's got this stuff on it and that wasn't something that there had to be told or the police couldn't find out about that because it was confidential, privileged information.  So, what we found was that having this legal support by qualified lawyers allowed survivors to challenge the requests for their data for their phones, GP records, school records. It was really successful at making the police and the CPS a bit more scared about asking for that kind of data, um, because there was somebody going, but why? That's not the rule? Like, what do you want? Why would you do that? And, and so it has this kind of really remarkable shift in their kind or organisational cultures that I can't think of any other policy that's ever had.  Um, it really did make, I mean it's limited, it's the law still, but it did make the investigations, a lot more sort of limited, and a lot more narrow and what they were asking of women, and a lot more relevant because of that.

There were problems, obviously, and it's, it is always going to be, to an extent, it's going to, it's always going to be a sort of plaster over a gaping wound. So I am really aware of that. But I think for those women who do want to go forward to the police. They should know that they will be treated with dignity, and having someone there who can challenge it when they're not treated with dignity, who has an insider to the legal system seems to be really effective at improving their experiences. That's a very long, very windy.

GA:  Well that sounds great, because obviously women in that situation, I mean they've had their concern ignored, so they're not going to feel empowered, they're not going to feel confident um, and legal stuff is complicated. There's a reason, you know, why there's you know lawyers and stuff around and it will make, you know, law more accessible, perhaps, maybe that's that sort of something that it does, so I think it's a good step in the right direction and accountability is important, isn't it, so if, you know, the police force, they’re people so they're a reflection of our society. And so there will be police officers who are great at this stuff and there will be police officers that really aren’t, so it's extra protection for victims who have largely lost faith in the justice system perhaps this will help a little bit. 

OS:  Exactly. And so I, as part of my work I spoke to some survivors, I spoke to them, interviewed, but also we surveyed almost 600 survivors, most of whom didn't report and we are probably kind of going to do some more stuff with that. Really important data, um, later on.  But for those who did report it was really clear that they had felt really treated badly by the system. They said the police were kind to them, most of the time, they were polite, um, most of the time, but that that didn't change the fact that actually, this was a really brutal system that massively affected their recovery, their sort of long term health, because it compounded, the, the difficult impact that it has on, on someone's well being. So, I think, like what you said was really important that this is a, this is a group of people who have been ignored and their consent has been ignored and overruled by somebody else. And then the police come along and some of the police officers in, before the lawyers were getting involved in this area, were saying oh but we don't need to ask the victim for their consent to get their medical records. Yeah you do actually. So they didn't understand that consent was even a thing that should be on their radar in a crime, when investigating a crime but it's all about someone's consent being taken away from them. And so, it just it, the lawyers were then able to go in and be like, no, you think you're getting consent, you are not, and explain those really basic things that should be obvious to people who are specialising in investigation of consent. And yet, didn't seem to be. So, the other thing I think it's really important to realise is that so many people don't understand, the victim doesn't have a lawyer already, so many people like when I've been speaking to people about this work, people would like, but doesn't the victim already have a lawyer? So, isn't the victim’s lawyer very good?  And it’s like, the victim is all witness that is used by the state to get some, like you know, for their own end, the victim does not have somebody who is there just to support them other than outside of the system. So, we have, you know, very under resourced very underfunded services that are able to help and support survivors outside of the legal system but once they're inside that legal system. All we do is say okay, we'll have someone who can hold your hand in the waiting area but once you're in there, you're just a witness. And that's not good enough. That's completely ignoring the reality of, of sexual violence that is, you aren't, you can never just be a witness in a case like, it's more important than that. 

GA:  Yeah, it's, you know, you're supposed to prove beyond reasonable doubt, it's not really fair if one side has a lawyer and the other side doesn't, essentially.  It sounds so important, it really does in lots of different ways, about fairness, about helping with the rehabilitation. Um, and, you know, access to justice, generally speaking, just access to justice and not being able to understand these things. And, you know, these women may have, you know, had like grooming and other things and may be full of self doubt from gaslighting and all sorts anyway. And the police and the CPS have been found to be problematic. I mean the most likely profession for a domestic abuse perpetrator has been found to be the police. So, it is a minefield really, so if there's someone there that can not only, you know, professionally rely upon them but are also specialists in this particular area, who knows their rights whereas they may not do, 

OS:  Exactly 

GA:  That sounds like something really important, definitely, is, is there any way that, that we as individual women can support this? Or raise awareness of it to get it rolled out more is when you think that we can do? 

OS:  Yes, please, um, so we've set up, me and the research team have set up a website called it’s needisclear.org and clear was meant to be something clever about Complainant’s Lawyers for Evidence And Rights as an acronym but time went away. Anyway, go to needisclear.org

And that has a whole load of action that you can take, so it's got some template letters you can send to your MP, as well as to Robert Buckland to the Justice Secretary um, and also it's got a petition, a link to a petition on change.org where we're calling for the Justice Secretary to introduce legal support for survivors of sexual offences. And it's really important because there is so much backlash against, it feels so obvious to us, that, of course, we should be supporting women particularly women, um, this was shown to be really, really helpful for women with particular sort of specially really chronic mental health conditions or learning disabilities where communication was more difficult, and actually it was really helped to ensure that they had the support that they needed. Um so, it seems really obvious to us that this is a good thing, and yet, actually, this is one of those areas where the law is very, very tentative and very conservative about it. And really, we need, I don't know much, I don't know how much to say. 

GA:  Well, it's, the law is generally, it's a boys club, isn't it? 

OS:   Yes

GA:  The majority of laws were made before we even had the vote, and even in everyday conversation you can be talking about any bloke, and a man will defend that bloke, you may not even know him, but they feel so defensive about it, and that there is sort of that element to that I think that there will be that bias within the police and the CPS in the law generally because it is a male run institution um, and I think, so another reason why it's really important is because rape is a serial offence, it never happens just once, and it's also an escalating offence. So when someone, a woman is failed when reporting rape, it isn't just failing that one woman, it's failing that woman, and the future multiple of a women.  Um, and, as you'll know rape conviction rates are currently at a historical low. And it's really important that anything to help this, be it through lawyers, be it through police, be it through CPS, any way that we can tackle this to say, do you know what society, you know, we do matter, our voices matter, our minds matter, erm, it is really important and I think that this work sounds really important and it sounds like it will help victims which is absolutely amazing, that's brilliant, so I want to say from the sisterhood perspective, and as a survivor myself who works with survivors to just say thank you very much for the dedication and the work to try and change the world, because the reality is that each piece of work that we do, you know, you may never meet these women but it will make a difference to their lives. So, thank you it's something that it's very important to say, erm, and the second thing, it is a very important question that I always ask everyone I do a podcast with, and that is what is your favourite cake?

OS:  I love cake so much, there’s pretty much no bad cake 

GA:  That’s because you are a good, decent woman 

OS:  I am particular though about chocolate cake so chocolate cake can be the best one ever, but only if it's not too dense, so, I only like homemade chocolate cake or any other basically any other cake.  I love it. 

GA:  I couldn't bake to save my life. So all of my cake is shop bought. I can't get on that. However, yes chocolate cake is, that's an excellent answer, all the brownie points, pun intended.

OS:  So good.

GA:  We’ll put all the information with the podcast, so everyone definitely go and check out that website, send those emails to, to MPs and Victim Commissioners and all the people on Twitter that you think might influence it, and let's it trying and get the word out there because if women know about this resource, then they've got a foot soldier in the battle with them haven't they and we all need that. So, thank you so much for talking to us today Olivia, really appreciate that.  Take care.

OS:  Thank you.  Have a nice day. 

GA:  You too.

Image by Sang Hyun Cho from Pixabay