Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 October 2020
It gives me great pleasure to speak in favour of the bill. I pay tribute to the victims and witnesses who gave such compelling evidence during stage 1. Their testimony will stay with me for life and members of the committee will recall that I was rendered almost incapable of moving on to the next piece of business after hearing that testimony.
I am sure that I echo the thoughts of colleagues in the chamber when I say that, because that evidence was so powerful, I feel a sense of grave responsibility, not only to speak to ensure that the bill fully serves its purpose, but also to use this platform to give voice to those who have been silenced for so long.
The recommendations contained in the HMICS report must be urgently addressed. There has been some progress in the intervening years, but the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated.
There has been a long-term upward trend in sexual crime in Scotland since 1974. Sexual assault, rape and attempted rape have increased significantly in the past 10 years. At the same time, reports by victims of rape and of sexual assault have consistently shown that the criminal justice system is a traumatic arena for victims.
The Scottish crime and justice survey for 2017-18 reported that only 23 per cent of respondents reported the most recent or only incident of forced sexual intercourse to the police. Evidence heard throughout the committee’s consideration of the bill confirmed much of what was already known about the lack of trauma-informed care. That aspect was harrowingly described in Dr Lesley Thomson QC’s “Review of Victim Care in the Justice Sector in Scotland” of January 2017, which stated:
“Victims often speak of feelings of re-victimisation or secondary victimisation once they enter the criminal justice arena. In the course of this Review, a victim of rape described the trial experience as worse than the crime itself.”
That is truly unacceptable and a failure of our duty to those women.
I believe that the bill’s ambitions are good in attempting to alleviate, at least in part, the trauma of post-sexual-crime forensics. There are, however, hurdles in the bill that we must overcome for it to reach its full potential. Self-referral offers the chance to help stop victims being pulled into a system that they are not ready for; it will give people time and space to consider whether they want to report an issue to the police; and it will offer some sense of empowerment in a situation where people have been made to feel utterly powerless. At the same time, the opportunity to seek prosecution is not lost. As the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said in its evidence, the bill will also enable
“potential evidence to be obtained and preserved at the outset, thereby potentially strengthening any subsequent investigation and prosecution should the person decide to report the incident to the police at a later stage.”
Making sure that important evidence is not lost is vital. Conviction rates for rape and attempted rape remain the lowest for all criminal prosecutions, with only 39 per cent of cases being successful. One of the largest declines in conviction rates in the past 10 years is that for sexual assault.
What makes the bill so important is the opportunity that it will provide for those who suffer from rape or sexual assault to seek help and secure justice. My concern, however, is that the bill fails to do that for children and young people—I intervened earlier on the cabinet secretary about why I believe that the bill’s minimum age of referral makes that the case. The bill proposes that the minimum age of self-referral should be 16, which would mean that those under the age of 16 would require to be accompanied by an adult. I understand that the logic of that is to ensure child protection, but I am afraid that it is not that simple. Victims of sexual assault who are under the age of 16 are most likely to be sexually assaulted by a parent or another adult whom they know, so the lack of autonomy given to young people in the bill would disadvantage them in accessing the bill’s full benefits.
Representatives from Children 1st spoke to the committee and to me directly, laying out concerns about how the bill as introduced risks inadvertently excluding children from the support that the bill seeks to offer. Children’s recovery needs are inherently different from those of adults. Children do not naturally compartmentalise their experiences, so they often need to address a multitude of experiences when recovering from a sexual crime. If, as the Government has stated, there will be no practical difference from meeting the needs of children who have experienced other types of abuse, it is not clear what the role of the associated clinical pathway is. Both of the concerns expressed by Children 1st highlight how important it is that any pathway developed alongside the bill must set out clearly how it will meet the forensic, medical, recovery and justice rights of all children.
Further to the issue of accessibility, I am concerned that certain areas of Scotland risk being disadvantaged by the bill as introduced. The Scottish Government’s assurance about a consistent approach being taken to accessing self-referral services needs to be more than just words. My colleagues in the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland have pointed out before that those from the islands face unacceptable hurdles in accessing the specialist support that an incident such as sexual assault or rape demands. We heard about some of that from a Conservative member earlier in the debate.