A Woman Is Suing the CPS Over How Her Stepfather's Abuse Case Was Prosecuted
A Woman Is Suing the CPS Over How Her Stepfather's Abuse Case Was Prosecuted
A woman called Annie is taking the Crown Prosecution Service to court. She says the way prosecutors handled her case — where she accused her stepfather of childhood abuse — was so poorly done that it violated her human rights.
This kind of lawsuit is unusual. Annie isn't just challenging whether the CPS brought the case. She's challenging how they ran it. If she wins, it could mean the CPS can be held legally responsible for the way they conduct prosecutions, not just for deciding whether to prosecute someone in the first place.
What Happened in Annie's Case
Annie reported her stepfather to police in 2017 for abuse she suffered as a child. The case didn't go to trial until 2021 — four years later, with multiple abandoned court dates along the way. When it finally happened, a jury couldn't reach a decision and her stepfather was found not guilty.
Annie's lawyers, from the Centre for Women's Justice, say the prosecutors made serious mistakes that likely changed the outcome.
The Specific Failures
Here's what Annie's legal team says prosecutors failed to do:
They didn't ask the court to allow evidence of the stepfather's past behavior — what's called "bad character" evidence. Under the law, this is a tool prosecutors can use to show a pattern. A single incident can be hard for a jury to understand. But if you show a pattern of similar behavior, it becomes clearer.
But there's more. Annie's own police interview was edited. Parts where she described domestic abuse, cruelty, and neglect were removed before the jury heard it. A photograph of her mother's injuries from an alleged assault by the stepfather was never shown to the jury. A letter from a solicitor documenting a violent assault on another family member wasn't mentioned. Police records of previous times the stepfather was reported for domestic abuse weren't presented to the court.
Annie's lawyers argue that all these omissions together amount to a violation of her human rights. The European Convention on Human Rights says the government has a duty to conduct fair and effective investigations and trials in serious abuse cases.
What the Numbers Show
Annie's case is not alone. A 2025 inspection found that in fewer than 2 out of 10 abuse cases, did prosecutors properly consider using bad character evidence. That's less than 20 percent.
That statistic matters. It suggests Annie's experience wasn't an accident or an isolated mistake. It suggests something is systematically wrong with how the CPS handles a type of evidence that often decides these cases.
Why This Case Could Matter Beyond Annie
The broader context here is about accountability. Internal complaints and government inspections have found these problems before. But they haven't changed how the CPS operates. Lawsuits are different. A court loss would mean real money damages and a binding legal judgment — those are incentives that inspections alone haven't provided.
If Annie wins, the CPS would have to treat prosecuting abuse and rape cases as a human rights obligation with real legal consequences. Right now, these cases are mostly evaluated through inspection reports, which carry less weight.
For people working in this area — prosecutors, victim advocates, those shaping policy around violence and abuse — this case is important to follow. The legal question it raises is specific but significant: if prosecutors make many small mistakes, taken together, do those mistakes add up to a human rights violation? The answer could reshape how these cases are handled in the future.
