Joseph McCann victim accuses authorities of ‘abandoning’ her and other traumatised rape victims

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A victim of serial rapist Joseph McCann has told how she felt “abandoned” by authorities during “intensely traumatic” efforts to bring him to justice.

The 25-year-old woman subjected to 14 hours of abuse and threats after she was kidnapped on her way home in Walthamstow on 25 April.

The woman and another victim escaped after she hit McCann over the head with a vodka bottle outside a Watford hotel, but he continued a rampage that saw him attack 11 victims in total.

In a statement read to the Old Bailey as McCann was jailed for life on Monday, the woman said she had difficulty leaving home and working.

She told how despite assisting police, gaining help for her trauma had been “complicated” and she was forced to pay for her own counselling because of a waiting list of up to a year.

“I am now in therapy, but paying for it myself makes me feel let down and like I am betraying the services that I know should be available for victims and survivors,” she added.

“I have been met with the utmost care, empathy and respect by nurses, doctors, advisers and police officers, to whom I owe more thanks than it is possible to express.

“However, the evident scarcity, under-resourcing and overstretching of specialist services for survivors has intensified my sense of isolation and abandonment by a society in which I used to feel safe.

“It feels like what has happened to me is not a social priority unless it's being sensationalised in the news.”

The woman said the trial itself was an “intensely traumatic event” that forced her to publicly relive McCann’s horrific abuse.

During cross examination, his defence barrister Jo Sidhu QC suggested she had got into McCann's car “willingly” and engaged in consensual sex.

The victim said his interrogation had made her question whether she could have fled sooner, acted differently, or whether events were her fault.

“The defence's questions echoed, and threatened to confirm, these intrusive and distressing thoughts,” she added.

“The fact that I am here to write this statement is testament to the answer: no. I had one chance. I did what I could in a situation that thankfully most people have no experience or understanding of – a situation for which nothing in my life had prepared me – and I survived.”

The woman said her life, work and relationships were “flourishing” before McCann’s attack, but her aspirations have now been “violently taken away”.

“To replace a life of thriving with one of surviving is deeply demoralising and difficult,” she added.

“I can only hope that this process will take us one step closer to building a society in which rape and sexual assault are never excused, in which the voices of victims and survivors are heard and respected, and in which this can never happen to anybody else.”

Her damning comments came amid longstanding campaigns for the government to introduce mandatory standards of support for rape victims, who may be advised against seeking support because counselling notes may be requested by investigators or defence lawyers.

The proportion of reported rapes prosecuted in England and Wales has plummeted to 1.4 per cent amid warnings that demands for personal records and unrestrained mobile phone access are causing victims to drop cases.

A judicial review against the Crown Prosecution Service is underway over the fall in charges, which campaigners alleged results from a “covert change” in policy.

London’s independent Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, said the McCann trial had seen examples of rape myths and victim-blaming.

“We know one of the victims faced persistent questions around the fact she had been drinking, had chosen to walk home, and why she had not run away – all attacking her credibility,” she added.

Ms Waxman said there should have been a pre-trial hearing to establish “ground rules” for questioning McCann's victims in order to prevent such accusations.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition said the wait for counselling described was “the reality that faces most survivors and why there needs to be sustainable long-term funding for specialist, trauma informed support”.

Campaigns manager Rebecca Hitchen added: “This statement also reinforces that the criminal justice system is not fit for purpose when it comes to rape.

“The additional pain and anguish directly attributed to her experience of defence barristers and the court process shows just how much change is needed for survivors to have any sort of faith they will be treated with respect and dignity by our system.”

A judge handed McCann 33 life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years on Monday, saying the case was a “campaign of rape, violence and abduction of a kind which I have never seen or heard of before”.

Mr Justice Edis called for an independent investigation into how the system “failed to protect” McCann’s victims, after it emerged that the rapist had been freed from prison by mistake and committed the offences while under probation supervision.

“It seems to me that there should be a systematic and independent investigation reporting in public into how the system failed to protect his victims from him,” the judge added.

“That does not need to re-traumatise the victims.”

The judge commended the bravery of the 11 women and children attacked, and said some were suffering “a real sense of having been betrayed by society and the services which are designed to help the victims of serious crime”.