A woman who alleges that she was raped as a teenager by an older man has called for changes to the judicial process after finding the experience of going to trial traumatic.
Isobel Goatcher claims that a man in his 60s attacked her after a party at her parents’ house in 2016, when she was 16. He faced a one-week trial in November after pleading not guilty to two charges of rape and sexual assault. The jury failed to reach a verdict.
The prosecution pushed ahead with a retrial, which was scheduled for July, but Goatcher has now withdrawn from the process because she says she cannot bear to endure another “horrendous” trial.
Goatcher, who gave evidence in court, says she felt as if the defence barrister’s cross-examination painted her as a “sex-crazed slut” who had pursued the man. The first question she says he asked her was: “You were a vivacious 16-year-old, weren’t you?”
“I don’t hate his barrister for what he said to me. He was just doing his job. The point is, there should be much stricter rules around what they can ask and the way they ask it,” Goatcher told the Guardian.
Now 23 and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, she said part of her wanted to press ahead with the retrial. “But I did not know how I could physically do that again,” she says.
Goatcher says she does not want to put others off reporting their accounts to police, but is speaking out and waiving her anonymity because she wants to raise awareness of the legal process.
The marketing coordinator says she is “grieving” after withdrawing from the process, allowing the man to escape another trial. She says: “I feel really sad that I had to make that choice, and that I felt like that was the only way for me to move on.
“It’s really sad that the system is the way it is and that the trials are that traumatic that I was willing to stop the case. I was willing to withdraw support because I knew that I didn’t want to put myself through that again. I feel broken and like I’ve been torn up.
“On some level I feel like I am weak for not going ahead with a second trial. But I know that that isn’t my fault, it’s the system’s fault. The system shouldn’t be so traumatic.”
Goatcher says she woke up to find the man on top of her in 2016. She says she told her best friend what happened that same day, and her mother and boyfriend a year later. She began having counselling in 2019 and says she told her therapist in her first session that she had been raped.
In July 2020, she reported the allegations to the police. The man was charged in April 2022, and the case did not go to trial for another seven months.
Goatcher says the delays affected her mental health. “It felt like years,” she says. “It was really tough because I felt massively out of control. I felt like I was being investigated. I had to sign waivers for them to have my medical records. They went right back to my primary school and got records from them, even though this happened when I was 16.
“It just felt so intrusive and so oriented towards me. He was interviewed once, and other than that I felt like it was all about me and how credible I was.”
Goatcher says she felt unprepared for the trial, and claims she was only told about the possibility of a hung jury three days before it opened. Prof Cheryl Thomas, from UCL, published a study last month that found less than 1% of rape cases between 2007 and 2021 ended in a hung jury.
Goatcher says she did not feel supported during the trial, having met the prosecution’s barrister 45 minutes before she was due to be cross-examined.
She says: “My close family and friends were [prosecution] witnesses in the trial so I couldn’t really rely on them for much support, because I wasn’t allowed to talk to them. So it was quite isolating and terrifying. The anxiety that I had in the two weeks before the trial was awful. I had to go on beta blockers because I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”
She feels “heartbroken” that the case ended in a hung jury but she hopes that by speaking out something positive can come of her experience. “I need to talk about what happened, others should know what the process is like, because it’s not fit for purpose. And it’s never going to change unless people talk about it,” she says.
“The people I want this to reach are those who are making these policies and can change the system.
“I realise cases like this are complex and take time to investigate, but waiting almost two years to find out if the case is going to court is two years of hell.
“And then, if you do get to court, you endure a whole new trauma of being cross-examined by a barrister where it seems nothing is off limits, no aspect of your life too personal to be questioned about. These are the things that need to change to make the process easier and less traumatising.”
A CPS spokesperson said: “In this case the CPS charged the suspect within 10 weeks of receiving the full file of evidence from the police. We were also able to support the complainant by allowing her to pre-record some of her evidence and she had the option of giving live evidence from behind a screen.
“Following a hung jury, we sought a retrial, but she declined further involvement. We considered going ahead, without the complainant giving live evidence again, using her pre-recorded video interview. But as she had already given evidence in person previously, this would not have been possible and so we ended the case. We are working hard with police to increase the number of rape cases going to court.”
In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
