Victims and Courts Bill

Natalie Fleet Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a member of the Women and Equalities Committee. Rape survivors are too often hidden in plain sight. In Bolsover, my constituency, 10,554 women will have been raped or sexually assaulted since they were 16—a third in their own homes—in Shirebrook, Tibshelf, Wessington, Barlborough and every village and town in between, and 5,277 of them will have been raped more than once; 880 will have reported it, and if we are lucky, 26 will have seen a charge brought.

I have permission to share the experience of one of the wonderful constituents who reached out to me. She said,

“I was spiked in a hotel and sexually assaulted in my room where I thought I would be safe.”

As a result, she says,

“I lost my job, my marriage nearly crumbled and I lost six of my son’s most formative years because my brain shut down completely…and I went into survival mode.”

She continues:

“We need to raise our boys better, to respect and work alongside women without judgement or expectations around sex”.

She is right, but this is not just a Bolsover problem; this is a society issue. Rape is a part of our national story—a part that we are not telling—and we cannot continue with a culture where he did it and she hid it.

Women do not report because they have been let down by the courts for too long. That was the case for another of my constituents, who went four years and five months from rape to trial, with multiple suicide attempts. I am so pleased that this Government are doing something about this, and are treating violence against women and girls as the national emergency that it is. The measures in this Bill mean that victims of crime will finally be put first.

The Bill is also our opportunity to put a full stop to a lifetime of ongoing trauma. I will keep speaking about the 10 babies born every day to their mummies who have been raped—six children in my constituency every year, and in every constituency across England and Wales. We see those children hidden in plain sight on our school visits; we see them as adults in the workplace; they drink among us in the pub. But their brave mothers have hidden the story behind their existence throughout history—often even from them.

The mums tell me about the struggle to bond with a baby who looks like the man who hurt them. They tell me about the pain of loving their children and also wishing that they did not exist. They tell me about living with the threat of their rapist being part of their life forever. One survivor said that she could not report the crime because the perpetrator had parental responsibility, and told her that he would use it if she reported it. Being charged, going to prison—nothing would take away his rights around the child who was conceived when he raped her. This Bill is our opportunity to change that. I call on our Government to remove parental responsibility where a child is conceived via rape. Our precious children can no longer be the only proceed of crime to which a criminal has lifelong access.