2026-03-19
44 分钟This is The Guardian.
Today, the MP Charlotte Nicholls on what it's like going through a rape trial and losing.
I propose to put a five-minute time limit on from after the next speaker.
Charlotte Nicholls.
I've thought very long and hard about speaking today.
I will allow honourable and right honourable learned members from the legal...
This is Charlotte Nicholls, the MP for Warrington North.
She's talking in Parliament during a debate about scrapping jury trials.
I wanted to focus my remarks on a particular perspective that I feel has been too often ventriloquized
in this debate and I hope the House will be gentle with me in doing so.
As you might be able to tell, she is very nervous.
I have spoken before in this place about having PTSD as the result of being the victim of a crime
but I have never specified the nature of that crime and in doing so I'm aware
that I am waiving my right to anonymity and the personal consequences that come along with that.
I care profoundly about rape victims facing intolerable delays for their day in court.
I know only too well what that feels like,
as after being raped at an event that I attended in my capacity as a Member of Parliament,
I waited 1,088 days to go to court.
Every single one of those days was agony,
made worse by having a role in public life that meant that the mental health consequences of my trauma were played out in public,