Help bring open justice to victims

Myself and a group of other victims are spearheading the Open Justice campaign.

Open Justice is a term that the government throws around a lot, but it actually means nothing to victims. I am myself a victim of rape and coercive control and when going through the system and specifically court - you are kept in the dark and you are always one step behind your perpetrator.

The Victims bill has been going through parliament for a long time, and its due for discussion again towards the end of the month. As a group of survivors we are urging the government to include a few points in the bill. The main one that we are asking for is access to court transcripts for free.

At the moment, victims are urged not to attend the trial after they have given evidence because it might 'sway the jury/judge' so we don't know what goes on. The entire trial is about us, but we have no idea what is being said. We dont know why the judge/jury made its decisions and if it gets to sentencing, why the sentencing has been decided. On top of that, if we want to make any complaints on how we were treated (mainly my defence solicitors) we need transcripts as proof.

At the moment a transcripts from a crown court can cost anything from £6K to £22K and trials in a magistrates court are not even recorded.

We started the open justice campaign to bring awareness to the wider public, to urge their MPs to support the changes we are proposing in the bill.

As part of our campaign, we want to create a landing page that will host information and the ability to email your MP. There will be some small running costs for this, and this is what we are asking for donations for. Additional funds will also be used to boost the campaign on social via paid media.