Gabrielle Shaw, Rachel Almeida and Duncan Craig gave evidence.

I welcome the three witnesses. Thank you for coming along. Would you all introduce yourselves briefly for the record, please?

Duncan Craig:

Hi, my name is Duncan Craig. I am the founder and chief executive of We Are Survivors, an organisation supporting boys and men, like me, who are affected by sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitation. Thank you for inviting me.

Rachel Almeida:

I am Rachel Almeida, the assistant director for knowledge and insight at Victim Support.

Gabrielle Shaw:

Hi, my name is Gabrielle Shaw. I am the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. NAPAC is a national organisation that supports adult survivors of any kind of childhood abuse, trauma or neglect.

I repeat what I said earlier: people should speak loudly, because the acoustics in this room are dreadful.

Q I will start by asking each of you to talk briefly about what you think of the Bill, and the Government’s definition of “victim” set out in it.

Gabrielle Shaw:

This is my “Mastermind” subject—thank you. First and foremost, it is good that we have the Bill. It is imperfect, as you will have heard today, but the fact that it is here and will potentially recognise victim status in statute is great, and there are some really good bits in it. My big thing is around the definition of a victim, because it is not currently explicit that you are a victim if your case has not been reported to the police. Clause 1(4)(b), which defines criminal conduct, states that, although you may be a victim,

“it is immaterial that no person has been charged with or convicted of an offence”.

By omission that implies that you have to have reported the criminal conduct to the criminal justice system. We are automatically cutting out the huge Majority of victims.

In its 2020 crime survey for England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics showed that there are more than 8.5 million adult survivors of some kind of childhood abuse or trauma. Colleagues know that only a tiny fraction of survivors will ever report or even disclose their abuse. If the Bill could be made more explicit to include that you do not have to have reported the criminal conduct, it just needs to have happened, what a win that would be. How important it would be to victims and survivors on the ground to think, “What happened to me mattered and I am entitled to support.” As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of making the definition more explicit to cover that.

Rachel Almeida:

This Bill is really welcome and has a lot of potential to improve the experiences of victims. We previously heard from the Minister that the Government’s intention is for victims who have not reported to be within scope, but given that there is a question around that, we would suggest that it could be made more explicit so that those who have not reported feel that the rights are for them. We welcome the additions to the definition in the draft Bill, and we would support widening the definition to include victims of non-criminal antisocial behaviour. Similar to what Vera Baird said earlier, we believe that a lot of victims are hugely impacted by persistent ASB. We agree that there needs to be a threshold for it to be persistent ASB, but we believe that their not having any rights means they are unable to access the support that they really need. We welcome the Bill and think it needs to be strengthened.

Duncan Craig:

I am really pleased with the Bill. I remember speaking to Minister Argar, and I believe that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create something. I absolutely echo what my colleagues have said. As a child abuse survivor, a victim of sexual exploitation and a victim of rape, I have not reported to the police any of what happened to me, despite the fact that I have spent the last eight years training police officers, using my story in various different working groups and sitting on various different boards. Although I hear what Gabrielle is saying and I think there is a really powerful statement in there about strengthening the Bill, what is really important for us victims is to be seen. We can talk about the semantics of it, but it is not about that; it is about being seen and knowing that all of you see people like me.

Q Can you expand on the child criminal exploitation element? Do you feel that there is a need to have a statutory duty in the Bill on child criminal exploitation?

Duncan Craig:

Are you talking about mandatory reporting?

Yes—and a definition.

Duncan Craig:

I get a bit nervous around this particular subject, because no matter where I have worked—whether it is the past 15 years within my organisation, or working over in Australia or the States—no one has ever been able to fully explain what it means for adult survivors. I absolutely think that what we need is 100% clarity to make sure that if any individual—professional or volunteer—knows that a child is being harmed, we will use all our powers to stop that happening now. I am not too sure how we carry on with that, to be honest.

Q Okay. Does anyone else want to comment on the importance of having a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation?

Gabrielle Shaw:

I am not—

Q That is fine. Rachel, what is your opinion on the code, as set out in the Bill? Is it enforceable?

Rachel Almeida:

The code is a really important document, which the Bill puts on a statutory footing. We really believe that if the code was put into practice, it would hugely improve the experiences of victims. There are a huge number of valuable rights in there that, if delivered, would provide victims with clear information, confidence in the system that they will hear what will happen to their case and support at court. We know that that does not happen in practice and we want a step change—a systemic change. We know that code compliance is really poor and what we need from the Bill is for that to change. We are concerned that, as the Bill stands, the change that is needed will not happen. A few things need to be done to strengthen the Bill.

The Bill refers to regulations being introduced to collect prescribed information. It needs to be more explicit that that applies to every single right. We want compliance with every single right to be monitored. From evidence we have seen, that will not necessarily happen, so it needs to be really clear that the regulations cover every single right.

We also believe that it should be made clear what level of compliance is acceptable. We know that compliance is quite low and, at the moment, the Bill hangs on the thread of transparency. It mentions collecting data—at the moment, the data will not necessarily be across all rights—giving the PCC oversight, although not powers to drive or compel agencies to comply or improve their compliance; that can be done only with the police, but it should be done across other agencies to drive compliance. That is lacking.

The Bill talks about information and reviewing the data, which is then shared with the Secretary of State. We do not believe that that level of oversight is enough. There is no enforcement mechanism or clarity that, if agencies do not comply across the board—we know that there are systemic issues with compliance—there will be any consequence; that anything will happen. We would like the Secretary of State at a national level to set out, as part of the regulations, a minimum threshold that criminal justice agencies are expected to meet. If they do not reach the required levels of compliance, there should perhaps be a warning period when they are given the opportunity to address the lack of compliance. However, if that compliance does not improve, we would like steps to be taken. For example, an inspection of the agency could be triggered to understand why they are failing to comply. There should also be clear recommendations that they need to remedy, and accountability around that.

That is not the only way it could happen, but we feel that it is a way that could work. Without that, at the moment, it is data being collected and published, but there are not really any teeth, which we would like to see.

Q So you are saying that the victims who come to you for support will not see any tangible difference unless the Bill is strengthened?

Rachel Almeida:

Yes.

Q Gabrielle, do you want to comment?

Gabrielle Shaw:

Yes. That is a really good point. I love what you just said about the tangible difference it makes to victims and survivors. It comes back to accountability. Building on Rachel’s points, accountability has to be built in from the start to make the Bill really effective. I was watching the previous session, when the Committee asked many interesting questions about collaboration and the duty to collaborate—ICBs, PCCs. That is great, but how do we measure the effectiveness of that collaboration? Will it just be a meeting once a year with collaborators? It has got to be stronger than that. I like what you are saying about strengthening the Bill. That is really important.

There is currently a duty on PCCs to oversee compliance with the victims’ code of practice—I read it quite a few times to make sure that I knew what I was talking about— but there is no similar duty to oversee compliance with the delivery of victim support services. That goes back to the making a difference on the ground that you mentioned. Compliance is patchy. There is really good stuff, but more consistency across the piece would make that tangible difference.

Q Rachel, do you think that the role of the Victims’ Commissioner should be strengthened?

Rachel Almeida:

Definitely. It should be at least on a par with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s powers, particularly the powers that criminal justice agencies are compelled to co-operate with. That is really important. Those powers are not currently proposed in the Bill for the Victims’ Commissioner.

Q What difference do you think that will make to victims and victims’ experiences?

Rachel Almeida:

It is enabling the Victims’ Commissioner to be that champion for victims and have that independent voice and ability to investigate where there is a lack of compliance, where areas are not improving and where they are seeing issues raised with them. They will have ways to address that and drive forward change.

Duncan Craig:

Could I make a comment on the victims code and the question you asked my colleagues? It is really interesting that when we started off talking about victims’ rights, we called it victims’ rights, and then all of a sudden we started calling it the victims code. I think there is something really important about that. All of the 2,500 men who come through our service every year and all of the thousands of women who go through Jayne’s service—Rape Crisis England and Wales—need rights, not a code. In the victims code as it is—again, I do not think it is semantics—section 32(1)(b) says that it relates to “any aspect of the criminal justice system”, but, as I go through the Bill, I see that nobody is holding my organisation to account, and actually somebody should be.

Once we have moved the police out of the way, even though so many people do not report to the police, as well as health and SARCs—in Greater Manchester, only 10% of people who access SARC are males and 83% of those are prepubescent children, so that is exactly where they should be—there is something about ensuring that the rights of the victim are held not just by statutory agencies but by the voluntary sector, who provide the Majority of the services that people want and access. So there is something about making sure that the voluntary sector is in here somewhere. We know—I have a really bad personal experience of going to a voluntary sector organisation; it made things worse.

Q Do you feel that that is about commissioner oversight being strengthened?

Duncan Craig:

Absolutely, and not just locally either, but nationally. There is something about commissioner oversight that should be better anyway—I think we should be spending smarter—but there is definitely something about real consequences for not adhering to victims’ rights.

Q Before I finish and we move on, we have parts 2 and 3 of the Bill, with part 3 put in at relatively late notice and little consultation. Do you have anything to say about part 3? Have you got any comments on the victims of major incidents?

Duncan Craig:

Part 3 was a huge surprise. I had been part of the working group—the task and finish group—for the victims Bill for quite a long time, and I was part of the end-to-end rape review. I think I even asked a question of where that had come from, because it just had not been talked about.

My organisation has services across all 15 north-west prisons commissioned by NHS England, and I just cannot see how this is going to help. It is so easy to draw a line between victims and perpetrators, but the absolute reality is that for so many people there is a really blurred line, particularly in prison. It is quite easy to write certain people off, and it makes me sad that we are doing that, because quite a lot of the women in prison and the men in prison have suffered various things in their lives as well. What we really need to do is help, and it feels like part 3 is more of a hindrance.

Gabrielle Shaw:

To add to that, it did come as a surprise—it came out of left field—but at least it is here, and we will work with what we have. Duncan makes an important point about the blurred lines between victims and perpetrators, and the crossing back and forth of it. It could have been, and perhaps could still be, a good opportunity, so let us work with what we have and turn it into an opportunity. In the earlier session, Catherine or Kate said that we need to look at this as a public health issue. If we are going to look at this in the round for victims, let us look at abuse suffered in childhood, what that means for life chances, and what that means if they go on to offend. There is a real opportunity here, and if we can turn it around, I will support that.

Rachel Almeida:

I agree that it was a surprise. We expected a victims Bill, and we would welcome it returning to being a victims Bill.

We have been waiting eight years for it.

Rachel Almeida:

I feel like the level of scrutiny given to the first part has not been allowed for the other two parts. We obviously suggest that that should happen.

Q Good afternoon. I am really interested in what Duncan and Gabrielle were saying about offenders having a history of abuse—being victims themselves—and how that can affect them and lead them to go on to abuse. What would it be helpful to have in this Bill to address that? What you have brought to light is very personal. It is often not spoken about, but it is realised, so I am really grateful that you mentioned that. What could or should be done to improve the Bill in relation to what you just said? I understand that that is a big question, but even if you just open up a dialogue, that is fine, too.

Duncan Craig:

When we talk about paedophilia and child sexual abuse, about 87% of paedophilic offenders are victims, but only about 3% of victims ever go on to offend, so vampire syndrome—the idea that if you have been bitten by a vampire, you will go on to become a vampire—does not exist. All the research shows that that does not stack up.

In my service—I am only talking about 15 north-west prisons, but some have category offenders—I am not necessarily interested in dealing with the offenders and their crime; I am interested in the root cause. My organisation sadly lost one of our survivors the other day. One of the things that I will carry with me about him is that I met him in prison—I was his therapist in prison—and we dealt with a lot of his experiences. I fought for the service to go into that prison because nobody was interested in dealing with his victimhood; they were interested only in dealing with his perpetration of the crimes he committed. That is right, but there is something here that nobody is talking about or dealing with. He was in a small group of people I approached as a survivor, as a therapist, as the chief exec of an organisation. I had a challenge from a couple of our service users, who said, “What are you doing, Duncan, about reducing offending?” and I could not tell them. What we are really good at in victim services—Jess, you know this from all your time in domestic abuse—is cleaning up, but when are we going to stop cleaning up and start preventing?

With part 3 of this Bill, we could do some incredible work in prisons and with prisoners around prevention so that, when people come back out of prison and into the community, there is a better sense of self and better support. What happened was only because I have an amazing commissioner in NHS England North who just took a punt, quite frankly—I am sure there is a proper word for that in commissioning, but it was a punt—and actually, 897 prisoners are now on our waiting list, they are being seen and are dealing with the things they needed to deal with.

Finally, when I started talking to Michael and said, “I think we need to do something; I think we need to do something about that 87%. What do we do about those men?”—they nearly are all men—“How do we make sure that they are not going back out and offending against women, children and other males? Maybe we need to deal with their root cause.” He said to me, “Everything in my body says no. Why should we deal with them?” And then I think, “Maybe if somebody had dealt with the guy who abused you, Dunc—maybe you would not have been abused.” It hits right there in the middle, and I think that this is a phenomenal opportunity for us to not just do stuff around victims but to prevent us from even having victims in the first place. That was a very long answer; apologies.

Thank you, Duncan. Sorry about your loss, as well.

Duncan Craig:

Thank you.

Gabrielle Shaw:

Great question. It is a hard act to follow.

To answer your question, there is an opportunity to name it in the very least. That would be such a great start here—to acknowledge the facts that Duncan just set out, and the proportions, and say it is a public health issue and really go hard on the public health and prevention aspect. Otherwise, we all know what is going to happen. If the comms message gets twisted, it will be “Oh gosh, everybody who has been abused as a child is going to go on to become a perpetrator.” We need to be really careful about how we message that. It could be about keeping the generalities—acknowledging the fact that a lot of abuse does come on to being part of a perpetrator—but talking about why we need to deal with it with money, resources, therapy and with all those things we know about, because that prevents and it makes people safer in the future.

At NAPAC, on our telephone support line, we hear from tens of thousands of survivors with many different stories and backgrounds. Survivors are not a homogenous group—there are so many individual stories out there—but I can say that there are key themes that come through. Probably the No. 1 key theme that we hear from survivors is “I wish it had not happened to me and I do not want it to happen to anybody else.” I do not purport to speak on behalf of survivors, but I can relay that theme to you as a Committee and help to tie that to your question. Put it in there; make it count.

Rachel, did you want to say anything or are you okay?

Rachel Almeida:

I am okay.

Q Duncan, you mentioned that you were training police officers. Have you seen an improvement in the police service in terms of understanding and working with victims, and even knowing about the code, over the years you have been working?

Duncan Craig:

I did, pre-pandemic. I used to go to the local training school. For a specially trained officer—an old-fashioned Nightingale officer—the 999 call comes in, and they go and lock down the scene, with the scene even being the individual themselves. They used to get five days’ training in forensics and so on, and they would have a whole day with me on working with male victims, because everything else that was talked about was around female victims. Then, on the very last day they would do role play with an actor and get scored. Effectively, it was a bit like an exam.

Now, I go to a university. I have done two classes now. I am really angry about this: in the first class, as I was telling my story—a story that I have told for seven or eight years—an individual put their hand up. There is a picture of me in the room where it happened. They put their hand up and said, “Yes, but do you not think that you should push them all off a cliff?” [Interruption.] I had exactly the same reaction as you; I was absolutely astonished. In seven or eight years, I have never had to kick anybody out of a classroom and I have never been surprised by it. It could just be a one-off, so I spoke to the tutors and said, “Just watch that.” Two weeks later, I went back to the same university, where a new cohort of police officers were being trained, and we kind of got the same thing. I do not know what has happened, other than we have moved from police training school to university, but I am terrified. I am terrified about what we are getting and what I am seeing on the ground now. There used to be a moment in time when I had done some training with every single police officer in my force, and I was really confident. I have zero confidence at the moment, and it is frightening.

Gabrielle Shaw:

I come at this from two perspectives. What we hear through the NAPAC support line, from thousands of survivors, is that some of them have disclosed to the police. Of course, people who contact NAPAC are a self-selecting cohort, but over the past five years the number of positive experiences relayed by survivors to NAPAC has risen. I think that is no coincidence, because I know at a national level—I will come to this in a second—there has been a huge drive by national policing to improve response to childhood sexual abuse. The hydrant programme has done a lot of work on this, as well as College of Policing and the NPCC. There has been a huge national drive.

As Duncan described, the issue is how that national drive, the national guidance and all those really good intentions translate down to force level. I can hear the chief constables now saying there is a squeeze on the training budgets and so on, but we need to maintain that pressure and the good intentions that have set at a national policing level, to ensure that trickles down properly. What Duncan described is not a rare or isolated experience at all. There is good practice as well, but there needs to be more consistency to get that real drive across all levels.

Duncan Craig:

I am not overly concerned about the current detectives at the moment, because we have a great relationship with them, but they are about to leave because they have done their service. It is exactly like the prevention bit—the bit that I am extremely concerned about is the new people.

Q I want to ask you some specific questions, Duncan, although I suppose Victim Support also operates ISVA services in some parts of the country. The Bill has specific clauses about ISVA and IDVA services. What do you think the guidance should contain? Do you think guidance on ISVA and IDVA services should be in there at all?

Duncan Craig:

I am a bit conflicted, if I am honest, about whether the Bill should contain the guidance around IDVA—

I am not conflicted; I don’t think it should.

Duncan Craig:

To be honest, Jess, I am probably leaning more towards your thinking. My organisation had the first male ISVA service nine or 10 years ago, and I know it is really patchy across the country in terms of what the judiciary and different judges will allow ISVA to do and not do, so my happiness about it being contained in legislation is that it is really clear what they are.

My unhappiness is about how restrictive it could be. What about people who have not been trained as ISVAs? What do we call them? Are we creating a hierarchy that does not need to be there? I definitely think we need some level of guidance, not necessarily for the ISVAs and for our services, but for the judiciary. What we do not want to see is an ISVA going into the witness box in an ITV drama and then everybody thinking that that is what ISVAs can do. We want clear guidance. I am worried about it being restrictive.

Q Do you think they should be able to sit in the witness box?

Duncan Craig:

Absolutely.

Me too, 100%.

Duncan Craig:

I think they should be able to do whatever the witness wants them to do.

Yes, me too. But Victim Support runs the service that is allowed to sit in the witness box.

Rachel Almeida:

Not all of them. Again, it varies hugely. In some areas, there are services where there are two courts, and one they are allowed in and one they are not allowed in. What good looks like is if the guidance could make it really clear that the roles need to be really independent. There is a role there to help establish the independence of the role and that these services should be independent from statutory organisations. The second thing is for the guidance to lead to improved and more consistent access, so that ISVAs can do their role fully and the support the victim-survivor through the court system. That is exactly what is needed. If the victim’s family wants them to sit next to them, they should be allowed to—they should be allowed in the court building—and that role should be recognised.

Q So you would want to see the guidance to state explicitly—it will not necessarily go in the Bill, but it will sit behind it in secondary legislation—that, for example, ISVA can always accompany a victim into a courtroom.

Rachel Almeida:

Further, I would say, in relation to section 28—whenever they are cross-examined, which may not necessarily be in the court building but could be in pre-trial cross-examination—that they should also be included in that room. Also, in the introduction of a CPS meeting, the ISVA should be there, invited and included as part of that process.

Duncan Craig:

In Greater Manchester, we have been trying, with the deputy Mayor, to do an opt-out of ISVA. As soon as someone is identified, they have an ISVA, partly because, particularly when we are talking about something that happened last night, we seem to ask the individual 25,000 questions when all they want to do is go home, have a shower, go to bed and have nobody talk to them—let alone decide whether they want an ISVA, an IDVA or whatever.

What we learned in some of our discussions with our clients was, if we gave them one, they just accepted—in some way, shape or form—and it meant that we could properly see somebody right through to the end. If we asked, “Would you like an ISVA?” they always say, “No, I’m fine.” Then it is not until three days before going into court that someone has a breakdown and we have to try to fly somebody in. It is about working a little bit with some agencies. I am very proud of our north-west CPS, because its first question is, “Who is their ISVA?” The police need to do a little bit of that and health really needs to do a lot of that.

Q You would have to guarantee that everyone could have one.

Duncan Craig:

That is the next bit. I did not say that we—

You could not possibly guarantee that every single rape victim would have one.

Duncan Craig:

Completely. It would be nice to.

I mean, I would.

Rachel Almeida:

I just want to come back to the guidance. Something that we are really keen not to happen is exactly what Duncan said: for it to lead to a hierarchy. A range of roles work in these services, and they are really valuable roles. There is a range of needs and victims, and the guidance needs to make sure that it does not end up excluding certain services or roles from being recognised as important in providing the support that is needed to victims. A concern we have is that all funding is channelled into ISVA roles only and then you lose the expertise and the recognition of the wider roles.

If there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for attending this afternoon and giving evidence. I apologise for the slight delay.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Fay Jones.)

Adjourned till Thursday 22 June at half-past Eleven o’clock.

VPB01 Restorative Justice Council

VPB02 Suzy Lamplugh Trust

VPB03 The Law Society of England and Wales

VPB04 Keep Prisons Single Sex

VPB05 Napo Trade Union for Probation and family Courts staff

VPB06 Victim Support

VPB07 Prison Reform Trust

VPB08 Lorna Hackett, Barrister, Head of Legal Practice at Hackett & Dabbs LLP and a tenant at Millennium Chambers

VPB09 Rape Crisis England & Wales, End Violence Against Women coalition, Centre for Women’s Justice and Rights of Women (joint submission)—The need for a bespoke regime to protect confidentiality of therapy records in rape investigations and prosecutions

VPB10 Rape Crisis England & Wales, End Violence Against Women coalition, Centre for Women’s Justice and Rights of Women (joint submission)—Independent legal advice for rape victims and survivors

VPB11 The Howard League for Penal Reform

VPB12 Liberty

VPB13 Centre for Women’s Justice