‘My childhood stopped’: woman sues CPS after taking stepfather to abuse trial

Annie’s lawyers argue that prosecution was so badly executed it breached her human rights At her kitchen table, in a village in southern England, Annie* sits with a blue folder stuffed with court documents, witness statements and correspondence relating to the trial of her stepfather, whom she had reported to police for alleged childhood abuse. As she prepared to tell her story for the first time, she was flooded with emotion when a photograph fell from the folder. The square Polaroid showed a young girl standing in a field beside a pony, dressed in jodhpurs and a riding hat. The young girl was Annie, who at the time was 12. “That’s what I was like when the abuse started,” she said. “I was just a developing young girl. And that’s when my childhood stopped.” Annie reported her childhood stepfather to the police in 2017. She had previously disclosed the alleged abuse, when she was 18, in front of her mother, stepfather and a friend, but no action was taken. By 2017 it had been some time since she had last disclosed the alleged abuse, but she had learned that her stepfather was babysitting young extended family members, and felt that unless she came forward “this was n