Women in Society

Baroness Stern Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stern]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her truly excellent maiden speech. She is clearly a formidable campaigner. As she told us, she is a former chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. She is also a campaigner against animal cruelty and she chaired the Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals. We cannot be surprised therefore—and this I learned from the website of a local newspaper in Norfolk—that she chose to be introduced into this House in animal-free ermine. I was glad to hear that animal-free ermine is available. I am sure other noble Lords will also be glad to know this and will be grateful to the noble Baroness for sticking to her principles in this way.

She told us that she studied theology at Oxford—at Lady Margaret Hall, I believe—and it is therefore appropriate that when she joined the House she found herself sitting with the right reverend Prelates the Lord Bishops. I am sure that those who have heard her speech will be very pleased that they will be sitting with her. Her speech was clear, forceful and full of practical points about how policies on women still need to change. I am sure that we all look forward to hearing much more from her in the days and months ahead.

I put my name down for this debate in order to speak about rape, which is a sad and traumatic aspect of women’s lives. It is not much in line with the title of our debate today, which is much more about the good things that can happen in women’s lives. I wish to speak about rape because I carried out a review of how rape complainants are dealt with in England and Wales, which was published in March this year. That gave me some insights and new experiences which I welcome the opportunity to share with your Lordships’ House. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, who gave me considerable support, both personally and through her role as chair of the Women’s National Commission.

Rape, of course, is not only about women; men, too, are raped. We do not know the actual numbers any more than we do with women; we think they are no more than one in 10 of all rapes. However, men, too, are raped and the consequences for them can be very serious and long lasting.

Today, however, I shall concentrate on women. My work in preparing the report brought me into contact with some marvellous people. Not many people know—I certainly did not—that there are two specialist projects in this country, one in Liverpool and one in Bristol, which work with street prostitutes and encourage them to report to the police when they have been attacked, abused and raped by men paying for their services. Both projects work closely with the police and a number of men have been convicted for assaulting and raping women working in street prostitution. In one recent case, according to the BBC report, the prosecution told the court that the defendant would pick up the prostitutes and take them to his home, where he had transformed a bedroom into a “torture chamber”. This is particularly important work because those who attack prostitutes may well do so more than once. The costs of the projects which work with women on the street are very small but their value is very great.

I was also very impressed by the special units set up by many police forces to concentrate on rape. These units include many dedicated men and women who are specially trained to put the victim at the centre of the investigative process. In one area—Gwent in Wales—after the creation of a special unit, the number of those reporting that they had been raped went up by half. Surely we all want more people to feel confident enough to report what has happened to them to the police. I met specialist prosecutors, fiercely determined to get evidence and put together a case that would stand up in court, and I met many independent sexual violence advisers who get alongside victims and support them throughout the process and sometimes for many months afterwards. They are also marvellous people.

Where such work is in place, it is outstanding and as good as anything anywhere in the world. I have mentioned it in the hope that the Minister will ensure that there is some thought given to its cost-effectiveness and importance before the axe falls as budgets are cut. I also want to mention those who sit on juries in rape cases. As part of my review, I sat in a busy urban Crown Court for two days, watching all the rape cases that were being heard. The seriousness with which the juries seemed to be approaching the task was impressive and the outcome of jury trials is reassuring. Excellent research called Are Juries Fair?, carried out for the Ministry of Justice by Professor Cheryl Thomas and published earlier this year, concluded that they do a good job:

“Juries convict defendants more often than they acquit in all rape cases”.

I will end by commenting on two areas that I hope can be kept on the agenda of discussions about how rape is dealt with. The first is the place of the victim in the process. Sara Payne, in her report on the views of rape victims, said:

“Victims frequently expressed anger that their place in the criminal justice system is effectively as a witness in their own case. Many were disappointed that the prosecution represents the Crown, rather than the victim, in contrast to the defendant who has his own legal representation”.

In talking to victims and victims’ organisations, I, too, encountered that anger. In Ireland there is separate legal representation for complainants in rape cases for some parts of the trial. I am aware of the difficulties of importing aspects of other systems but I hope we would not close the door to these ideas and that they can be looked at further. Victims also feel that once their case seems unlikely to proceed, all the agencies lose interest in them. We need to do something about that too.

My second point is the need for a much more intelligence-based approach on the part of the police. Good policing in relation to rape is about much more than being victim-centred, important as that is. We are all aware of the gross mistakes that were made in the cases in London of John Worboys and Kirk Reid, who assaulted many women. The police missed many opportunities to arrest them. Using intelligence properly is key in investigating and prosecuting rape. I was concerned at the large amount of evidence I received that rape is particularly suffered by the very vulnerable, who are the least likely to be believed or seen as possible witnesses able to stand up in court and testify. It became clear to me that there was a group of very vulnerable, very young women who were easy to take advantage of and who may have experienced abuse from childhood, their only and whole experience of sex being that of abuse. They may even think that is the norm. As I learnt more about this whole area, I became more concerned that we have not yet got right the way to deal with this, and we need to become much more organised in trying to protect these young women.

Finally, I am most grateful for all the support I have had in preparing and launching my review and continuing to work on its outcome. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for her comments and for the positive replies I have had across government. I welcome the Government’s commitment to Rape Crisis centres and I hope we can continue to improve the treatment of victims of this particularly horrible crime.