‘My childhood stopped’: woman sues CPS after taking stepfather to abuse trial

At her kitchen table, in a village in southern England, Annie* sits with a blue folder stuffed with court documents, witness statements and correspondence relating to the trial of her stepfather, whom she had reported to police for alleged childhood abuse.As she prepared to tell her story for the first time, she was flooded with emotion when a photograph fell from the folder. The square Polaroid showed a young girl standing in a field beside a pony, dressed in jodhpurs and a riding hat.The young girl was Annie, who at the time was 12. “That’s what I was like when the abuse started,” she said. “I was just a developing young girl. And that’s when my childhood stopped.”Annie reported her childhood stepfather to the police in 2017. She had previously disclosed the alleged abuse, when she was 18, in front of her mother, stepfather and a friend, but no action was taken.By 2017 it had been some time since she had last disclosed the alleged abuse, but she had learned that her stepfather was babysitting young extended family members, and felt that unless she came forward “this was never going to stop”.Annie resolved that she was “going to do something about this”. It marked the start of an almost decade-long fight. And one which continues.A picture by Annie.When Annie’s case against her alleged abuser finally came to trial in 2021, after multiple abandoned court dates, the case resulted in not guilty verdicts and a hung jury.In a rare case, she is now suing the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Her lawyers, at the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ), argue that the prosecution was so badly executed it amounted to a breach of her human rights.One of Annie’s key complaints is that prosecutors did not apply to introduce bad character evidence about her stepfather, and so all references to the domestic abuse and cruelty and neglect she also alleged she had suffered as a child were edited out of her police interview.A photograph she had provided to the police, which she says was taken of her mother just after she had been assaulted by her stepfather, in which her injuries were clearly visible, was not shown to the jury; a solicitor’s letter that mentioned a violent assault on another family member was not referred to, and reports of police speaking to him about allegations of domestic abuse were also not introduced in court.It meant Annie could not put her allegations, and her difficulty in reporting them, into the context in which she says they had happened.“How can I not talk about the fact that these enormous fights are going on?” she said. “And that fear: that’s the main thing that is around this family, fear.“We walk on eggshells, it’s more like broken glass, all of our lives since they got married. That’s what it was like.“There was a loaded shotgun behind the larder door. How can you live a normal life when there’s a loaded shotgun there? You can’t live a normal life. You’re petrified that if you take a step wrong, that gun is going to come out.”A sketch by Annie.A 2025 inspection report into adult rape cases found there needed to be better identification and consideration for bad character applications to strengthen prosecution cases, stating: “In fewer than two in 10 cases where it was relevant did the prosecutor address how bad character relating to the suspect could have strengthened the case.”Annie said: “Sexual abuse on children doesn’t just happen in a moment in time, in isolation.“So often there are things going on in the background. There is violence, there is intimidation, there is domestic abuse.”By the time the case eventually got to court, her stepfather had been charged with multiple counts of indecent assault, and one of rape.On several occasions before the trial, Annie had to watch her achieving best evidence (ABE) interview, which was three-and-a-half hours long, only for those court dates to be cancelled at short notice.When her case finally came to court, she met her CPS-allocated barrister.“Not once in four years have I met my barrister who’s going to defend me,” she said. “He comes down to see me after I’ve watched my ABE again. His first words to me were: ‘I’m sick of your face, to be honest.’ And I literally couldn’t speak.”He had said this, she said, “because he’s had to watch my ABE so many times”.“And I just felt like crumbling,” she said. “I felt like saying I’m sorry. You know, what do you say?”One trial was begun and then abandoned after the wrong evidence was shown to the jury.The police wrote a letter “saying how sorry they were that the judge was inconvenienced that day”, Annie said. “I had to watch my ABE again in the victim room downstairs in the cellar with the cleaner, the court staff listening to my abuse, to me discussing my rape.“I didn’t get anybody writing to me saying: ‘I’m really sorry you had to do that,’ but the judge got a written apology.”According to Annie’s complaint, during the trial key witnesses who would have supported her account of events were not called. She says she was not told why.Bad character and hearsay evidence can be admitted only if a judge agrees the jury can hear it, and so it is not clear whether this would have been the case should the CPS have asked.The jury found her stepfather not guilty of some of the sexual assaults. It was unable to reach a majority verdict on the others or on the rape. His defence was that Annie had fabricated the allegations.It is impossible to know whether the verdicts would have been different had the bad character evidence been introduced.Soon after, Annie attended an online meeting with the CPS, and days later, she learned they would not be seeking a retrial.“I’d had no prior warning to this; I received a letter just as I was about to walk out the door, saying that my stepfather had been acquitted of all charges,” she said.“I was so shocked; I just took the letter upstairs and just fell back on the bed and I was so upset. I couldn’t even tell [my husband] about it, I just couldn’t,” she said. “I just couldn’t tell anybody because I just didn’t have the language for it.”But for Annie, it did not mark the end. She began throwing herself into legal research.“So on my own, feeling the worst I’ve ever felt in my life, physically and mentally, I had to start writing this complaint, which took a year,” she said. “But at the end of it, the CPS did come back and said that they had made this legal error not to adduce all of the bad character evidence.”Armed with this admission of failure from the CPS, she took her case to the CWJ, which has issued a claim against the public body on Annie’s behalf.“In Annie’s case there appear to have been so many bases on which the CPS could have applied to introduce the bad character evidence,” said Kate Ellis, a CWJ solicitor.“For example, the law recognises that evidence of domestic violence can be admitted as evidence that the defendant has a propensity to commit other forms of violence against women and girls.”“This is why, we think, the CPS has admitted to getting the law wrong in response to Annie’s complaint,” she added, “but that admission is, sadly, too little too late.”“I don’t think I could have imagined that nearly a decade on I would still be feeling like I did this morning,” Annie said. “Finding the photographs, looking at all the documentation, and it just ripping me up, to those same emotions.“I’m still having to fight to be heard. I haven’t received justice. But I do see an end is in sight, and I do hope that something good will come out of this.“So that other women will be listened to, and their abuse will be listened to in its entirety.”A CPS spokesperson said: “Due to live civil litigation proceedings, we are unable to comment on the specifics of this case.“More broadly, we recognise the profound impact that rape and serious sexual offences can have on victims, and are committed to continuous learning to strengthen consistency across the CPS.”*Name had been changed.