This is the joint website of  Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

 

 

 

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Demanding Justice and protection (Police and CPS)

Name and shame

The conviction rate for rape has fallen from one in three reported cases in 1977 to 6.5% in 2010. All survivors of sexual violence are up against entrenched institutional sexism from the legal, immigration and compensation authorities. We are disbelieved and treated disrespectfully throughout the legal process, including when:
• Evidence is not gathered or presented properly by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service – beginning with the woman’s statement to the police.
• Women are pressed to withdraw, or find their case was dropped.
• The victim never meets the person presenting her case;
• If the case ever reaches court the woman is put "on trial", and not defended by the prosecuting barrister;

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Keir Starmer orders change in dealing with rape claim retraction cases

In the Media

Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer acknowledges legal 'failings' in recent rape claim case

Afua Hirsch
The Guardian, Thursday 16 December 2010
Article history

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has ordered a change in the way in which rape claim retraction cases are dealt with.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has ordered a change in the way government lawyers deal with cases against women who withdraw rape claims, acknowledging "failings" in the handling of a recent victim.

In his first public statement since a woman was freed from jail last month after being convicted of perverting the course of justice for retracting a rape claim, the chief prosecutor in England and Wales has said that from now on, similar cases will require his personal approval.

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The rapists' best friend

In the Media

Comment & Debate
The Worboys case is a familiar catalogue of police incompetence, laziness and prejudice, Lisa Longstaff
The Guardian, Saturday 14 March 2009

If the Sapphire unit - set up by the Metropolitan police to focus exclusively on sexual offences - had been created to protect John Worboys, the taxi driver found guilty yesterday of a series of rapes and assaults, it couldn't have done a better job. We are unfortunately very familiar with such a catalogue of police incompetence, laziness, prejudice and even hostility.

Despite decades of campaigning publicly and privately for the police to take rape seriously, all we have seen is a series of public relations exercises that change nothing. Rape continues to be deprioritised. Each time we complain we are told that rape is particularly difficult to prove. But the blunders are glaring and always the same.

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