Jessie was preparing for work one April morning in 2021 when, out of the blue, she received a message on her Facebook account.
The sender was a girl called Lauren; someone she knew of, but had never met.
‘She was an ex-girlfriend of my former boyfriend,’ Jessie recalls.
What Lauren had to say chilled Jessie to the bone.
‘It’s taken me a lot of time to send you this message,’ Lauren wrote. ‘I am his ex-girlfriend. Me and him were together for a year and a half, and in that time he raped me twice. It took me a very long time to accept what happened to me.
‘I don’t know anything about your relationship with him, and I really hope that he was not inappropriate to you in any way.’
That hope was already shattered: Jessie had been raped several times during the course of her year-long relationship with the same man, something she had tried to bury in the aftermath of their break-up.
Now, that carefully constructed edifice of denial crumbled in the face of Lauren’s message, which also said there was a third girl who had been raped by her ex.
Jessie was preparing for work one April morning in 2021 when, out of the blue, she received a message on her Facebook account (file photo)
Filmed over three years, Rape on Trial lays bare the pressure on victims and explores the challenges of securing a conviction when the alleged perpetrator is someone you know
In the flood of emotions that followed – devastation, guilt, fear – Jessie knew instinctively that she had to go to the police.
‘It wasn’t just about me anymore. I knew I had to do something for the sake of the women before and the women after,’ she says. ‘It was bigger than just being about me.’
What happened from then on is the subject of a compelling and troubling two-part documentary that broadcast on BBC1 last night. Presented by Stacey Dooley, it follows Jessie, then 23 – as well as two other rape cases brought by a 19-year-old and a 22-year-old – and details what happens after a woman reports her rape to police.
Filmed over three years, Rape on Trial lays bare the pressure on victims and explores the challenges of securing a conviction when the alleged perpetrator is someone you know. It also reveals the pressures placed on police and the Crown Prosecution Service – and the difficulties faced by juries – in cases which boil down to one person’s word against another.
‘I completely understand where they’re coming from,’ Jessie tells me, referring to those who still struggle with the definition of rape when not committed by a stranger. ‘But it’s not right, and in real life what happened to me is a more likely scenario than somebody jumping out of a bush in an alleyway.’
That sentiment is borne out by statistics: a recent Criminal Justice Inspectorate report found that in 84 per cent of reported cases, the assault was committed by someone known to the complainant.
Jessie, now 26, a bubbly and attractive young woman with a ready smile, is part of that statistical mass, although she worked hard to not allow what happened to define her.
Nonetheless, she admits it impacts her relationships to this day. ‘I’m almost too quick to, you know, jump at the first sign of somebody who might love me,’ she confides, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m just constantly searching for a man who isn’t a monster.’
Initially, her ex-boyfriend did not fit the ‘monster’ mould either. Jessie was 15 when she met him at the gym she attended where he was an instructor, and, after they started dating a year later, he was welcomed into her close knit, loving family.
At four years older, there was an age gap, although Jessie says it is only latterly she has had chance to reflect on the power dynamic. ’What I saw as charming I now see as manipulative,’ she says. ‘But I thought I was in love. Now I look back and think I had no idea.’
Certainly the sex, when consensual, was intimate and loving. ‘But then there was the abuse,’ she says quietly.
This happened in the morning, usually when Jessie was still asleep, when she would wake up to find her boyfriend inside her, his hands clamped on her shoulder blades.
Stacey Dooley: Rape on Trial was aired on BBC1 9pm last night
Presented by Stacey Dooley, the programme follows Jessie, then 23 – as well as two other rape cases brought by a 19-year-old and a 22-year-old – and details what happens after a woman reports her rape to police (file photo)
‘I remember the first time it happened I was like: “Please can you stop? Why are you doing that? I’m asleep.” But he didn’t. That continued fairly often – it was almost ritualistic. I’d be woken up to it, his hand would be there between my shoulder blades, and if I tried to turn, there would be enough force to hold me there. I explained to him that I didn’t like it, for him to stop, but he didn’t. And that just continued until the end of our relationship. It got to the point where I would just pretend I was still asleep.’
She was young and confused: ‘I liked a lot about our relationship, then there was this side I hated, and I couldn’t reconcile these feelings,’ she says.
A year later, the pair mutually agreed to split up, as Jessie was off to university and neither wanted a long-distance relationship.
Jessie went on to have other boyfriends, but admits to battling anxiety and an ‘innate feeling of not being safe’.
‘At the time, I just thought I was a young woman and that all young women feel this way,’ she reflects. ‘But now I’ve been more open and I have sought help, I have been able to recognise that those feelings are related to what happened.’
It was a year after she had graduated when Jessie received the message from Lauren that finally forced her to put a word to what she had been through.
Like Jessie, Lauren, who also features in the BBC documentary, had been initially bowled over by the charismatic man with whom she had gone travelling in Australia, only to be raped twice while she was there. Lauren details how the first time he raped her also happened in the morning, in a shared hostel room.
‘He was spooning me, and he starts kissing me, touching me. I said “No” and he pulled my knickers down and just went for it. My whole body froze. Couldn’t move. All I could hear was his breath next to my ear. I kept saying, Stop. I said, Get off me. I don’t want this. And he carried on until he finished,’ she recalls in the documentary.
She describes her bewilderment when he then behaved as if nothing had happened and the shame she felt after accusing him of raping her and his astonished rebuttal. ‘He said: “No, I didn’t. You’re my girlfriend. I love you. I wouldn’t do that to you.” He was upset that I’d even suggested it,’ she recalls.
She reported it to police in Australia, but the case was dropped through lack of evidence.
It meant that while her case could not be prosecuted in the UK, if Jessie went to the police Lauren could be called as a witness.
First though, Jessie had to confront what had happened.
‘It was really overwhelming,’ she says of reading that initial message. ‘I was having to confront something I’d kept down for so long.’ She met Lauren the same day.
‘It was very emotional,’ Jessie recalls. ‘She told me her whole story, and it was like she was telling me my story. I had been in denial that whole time, but then the realisation flooded in that he knows what he did. You don’t rape someone by accident.’
The next step was to tell her mother Michelle, who talks movingly on screen about the changes she witnessed in her once joyful, happy-go-lucky daughter as she progresses through the legal system.
‘It’s your worst nightmare,’ she tells the documentary of the moment her daughter confided in her. ‘I was so angry. There was a sense of betrayal. We used to have him round for barbecues. Everyone liked him. I was just so angry at him.’
When Jessie goes to the police, she says she is questioned by a female officer and treated with respect. Her ex is subsequently arrested and charged with three counts of rape, two in relation to Jessie and another in relation to a third woman who chooses to remain anonymous.
Little could Jessie know then that this would be the start of an agonising judicial process that would last almost four years: while the trial was initially set for September 2021, barrister strikes meant it was postponed for 14 months until November 2022.
Like Jessie, Lauren, who also features in the BBC documentary, had been initially bowled over by the charismatic man with whom she had gone travelling in Australia, only to be raped twice while she was there (file photo)
The lengthy filming process and the impact on victims left its mark on presenter Stacey Dooley too. She has subsequently observed that if she were raped she has faced the ‘bleak’ realisation that she ‘would not bother’ going to the police
As news reports from the time make clear, Jessie was not alone in facing such enormous delays, with sexual offence cases, where many accused are on bail, taking the longest time on record to go through crown courts in England and Wales against a backdrop of a spiralling increase in cases being sent to trial. At the time of writing, complainants are waiting on average more than two years for their cases to complete in court.
In the meantime, all Jessie could do was wait, labouring under the knowledge that she could bump into her ex at any time – as she frequently did: at one point the camera catches her clear distress after she has seen him undertaking building work near her house.
’I’d see him quite a lot,’ she tells me. ‘On nights out, I’d see him in the pub. All I could do was turn around and leave.’
Finally, in November 2022, the case opened and Jessie was called to testify about events that by that point were eight years old. She was then cross-examined for two hours, an experience she describes as ‘brutal.’
‘I don’t think I have been through anything worse,’ she says quietly. ‘I was just crying the whole way through as the defence barrister was telling me that I was lying, that I didn’t say no, I didn’t fight him off. So she was basically trying to make out to the jury that I didn’t say no, so that means yes.
‘Overall, the suggestion was that the three of us had nothing better to do than make up this allegation.’
When the jury retired, Jessie, Lauren and the other victim could only reassure themselves they had done everything they could. But then, after an agonising four days of deliberation, they learned that the jury could not agree – an outcome for which she had not prepared.
Filmed at the time, she poignantly tells the cameras that she would have preferred a ‘not guilty’ verdict as at least she could have moved on.
‘I just wanted it to be over,’ she says, describing her devastation. ‘I’m now a victim of the system as well. I now feel like I’m fighting both.’
The only comfort was that it meant that at least three – maybe even nine – of the jurors thought he was guilty, as otherwise there could have been a majority verdict.
‘That definitely us gave us hope in terms of making the decision about a retrial,’ she says.
With the three women all agreed on a retrial, another date was set for June 2024, only for that, too, to be moved again, this time to January this year – meaning that the trial would take place nearly four years after Jessie first went to the police.
‘It has literally taken years of my life, the person that I was before was very outgoing and confident, and now I am a nervous wreck,’ she confides of the way the impending trial has hung over her life. It’s a sentiment that is poignantly echoed by her mum, who says her daughter is ‘not the same Jessie that she was… and I just want her back.’
‘I think I was completely oblivious to that change in myself,’ Jessie says now of her transformation from a happy-go-lucky character into an angrier person. ‘At the time I had no idea, but I can recognise it now. It was a massive mental trauma. And you can’t move on.’
Finally, in January this year, Jessie took the stand once again along with Lauren and the other victim, buoyed by the prediction of the officer in charge that they had a good case. ‘I think I’d got my hopes up,’ Jessie admits.
Rape on Trial reveals the pressures placed on police and the Crown Prosecution Service – and the difficulties faced by juries – in cases which boil down to one person’s word against another
Jessie doesn’t regret going through the process, even if she didn’t get the ending she hoped for. In fact, she feels empowered by speaking out (file photo)
This time, the jury did come back with a verdict: not guilty. The documentary shows the moment when Jessie and Lauren hear the ‘shattering’ news: Jessie seems stunned, almost unable to take it in. ‘It’s like these women were cross examined and dragged through this for years – and for what?’ she says.
Lauren, meanwhile, is shown sobbing uncontrollably at home when she receives the result over the phone. Their feelings will doubtless have been shared by many other complainants, given that 2022 statistics reveal that, in England and Wales, more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction.
Today Jessie continues to feel wronged by the system, though she also understands the challenges juries face.
‘They are asked to make a decision beyond reasonable doubt, and I’ve never been beyond a reasonable doubt about anything,’ she says. ‘Ultimately, it was our word against his – although that’s still three against one, three separate people, completely unrelated to one another, who’ve been dragged through this for years.’
The lengthy filming process and the impact on victims left its mark on presenter Stacey Dooley too. She has subsequently observed that if she were raped she has faced the ‘bleak’ realisation that she ‘would not bother’ going to the police. ‘In terms of what I’ve witnessed, I wouldn’t feel confident’ she told the Radio Times, adding that it is one of the few crimes where the credibility of the alleged victim is immediately brought into question.’
Nonetheless, Jessie doesn’t regret going through the process, even if she didn’t get the ending she hoped for. In fact, she feels empowered by speaking out.
‘I had to do it, not just for me, but for other women like me,’ she says. ‘I don’t know the answers to getting better conviction rates, but I know we have to try to do better.’
Stacey Dooley: Rape on Trial was aired on BBC1 9pm last night.
