England and Wales to establish specialist rape courts with victim protections

The prime minister announced this week that England and Wales will establish specialist courts dedicated to rape and sexual assault cases over the next two years, a move that brings together a cluster of protections designed to shield victims from the machinery of the courtroom itself. Each crown court will designate at least one courtroom for these cases. Victims will be able to watch proceedings from a separate room via video link and give their evidence the same way, avoiding the need to sit in the same space as the person accused. Where building layout permits, they will have private entrances and waiting areas kept distinct from those used by defendants. The government has budgeted roughly £23 million for these changes.

The reforms emerged directly from the public testimony of Charlotte Nichols, a Labour MP who waived her anonymity in March to describe her own rape and the grinding wait that followed. She spent 1,088 days waiting to go to trial—more than three years of what she called agony, each day compounded by the knowledge that her attacker would eventually be acquitted in criminal court, though she later won a civil case against him and secured compensation. When she spoke in Parliament, she was responding to government proposals to restrict jury trials, which she saw as another blow to victims already failed by a system that moved with glacial slowness. Her willingness to name herself and her experience gave political weight to what had long been documented by victim advocates: the system was breaking people.

Court staff handling these cases will receive trauma-informed training, and each survivor will be assigned a single point of contact to navigate the process. From next month, rape trials will be assigned fixed dates rather than placed on floating lists that could be postponed indefinitely. Prime Minister Andy Burnham framed the changes as an effort to rebalance justice toward victims, acknowledging that prosecution rates for rape remain low and that many victims wait years for their day in court. "For too long, victims of rape and serious sexual offences have felt let down by our justice system," he said, adding that the reforms alone would not be enough—prevention work must accompany prosecution.

Rape Crisis England and Wales, which had been calling for many of these measures for years, called the announcement a significant step forward. The charity's chief executive, Ciara Bergman, said the changes reflected an urgent need to make courts fit for purpose and responsive to what victims actually need to participate in justice. The government also announced earlier this year that rape victims would have access to specialist legal advice throughout the criminal justice process, a separate but complementary reform.

The backdrop to these announcements is a system under visible strain. Last year, the Salford Survivor Project documented how victims of rape and sexual assault were being failed by record court backlogs, with long delays taking a documented toll on mental health. One woman told the BBC that she had dropped her case after reporting an alleged sexual assault in early 2022. She gave evidence in court in December 2023, but the case was adjourned when the judge fell ill. By September 2024, when it was scheduled to resume, she had decided she could not endure further waiting. "I couldn't let this hurt me further," she said. Without her testimony, the Crown Prosecution Service had no choice but to drop the case for lack of evidence. Her withdrawal was not unusual—victims withdrawing cases because of delays has become common enough that the opposition Conservative Party cited it as a disgrace, though they used the moment to push back against Labour's separate proposal to restrict jury trials in some cases.

The specialist courts represent a recognition that the physical and procedural environment of a trial can either compound or mitigate the harm already done. They are not a solution to the underlying problem of case backlogs or the time it takes to bring a prosecution to trial. But they are an acknowledgment that if a victim does make it to court, the court itself should not be another site of trauma. Labour promised in its 2024 manifesto to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. These courts are one piece of that commitment, though the real test will be whether the fixed trial dates actually accelerate cases through the system, or whether they simply create a new kind of delay.