Helen Pitt (2:21)

When her case finally reached court, it ended with the jury unanimously acquitting the

Interviewer (2:26)

man she accused of rape. But still, she tells MPs she does

Helen Pitt (2:30)

not think scrapping jury trials for lesser offences will cut the backlog in the courts. This is what the government wants to do, removing a defendant's right to opt to have their case heard by a jury if their likely sentence is under three years. That would never include rape cases, but the government has argued that it will free up space in the system so that complainants like Charlotte have their cases heard sooner. She disagrees. And ahead of a vote on the bill last week, she decided to make her case by sharing her biggest secret.

Parliament Speaker (3:04)

We have been told that if we have concerns about this bill, it is because we have not been raped or because we don't care enough for rape victims. The opposite is true in my case. It is because I have been raped that I am as passionate as I am about what it means for a justice system to be truly victim focused. It is because I have endured every indignity that our broken criminal justice system could mete out that I care what kind of reform will actually deliver justice for survivors and victims of crime more widely.

Helen Pitt (3:35)

From the Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. The story behind Charlotte Nicholl's Common Speech. There are two things I want you to hear right at the top. One, this episode contains swearing and discussions of allegations of sexual assault and suicide. And secondly, this episode is not an attempt to replay a trial that has already taken place. The man you're going to hear about today was found not guilty of all of the charges against him and we have chosen not to name him. But we think this is a story worth telling because of what it reveals about the criminal justice system in England and what it's like making a complaint of rape and taking it through the courts.

Interviewer (4:19)

We're talking the day after you took a very brave step of waiving your anonymity and standing up in Parliament to talk about the rape trial that you were the complainant in back in 2024. How are you feeling right now, having it all out there?

Charlotte Nicholls (4:36)

In a strange way, it feels a bit like a weight has been lifted. I felt throughout the process itself silenced by not wanting to say anything that could, you know, potentially prejudice the case. But following the case, felt silenced in a similar way because given there was an acquittal, I worried that Wavy my anonymity would just be giving free reign to every stranger on the Internet to, you know, call me a lying slag or what have you, but I, I feel it was the right thing to do. I feel. I feel better for having done it. And actually I feel really bold over this morning by I can't keep on top of my WhatsApp and stuff with how many supportive messages are coming in emails and things. It's. I feel I've done the right thing.

Interviewer (5:36)

And what was it like standing up to make that speech? Had it been a long time coming?

Charlotte Nicholls (5:42)

Yes and no. I had signed Karl Turner's letter months ago. Now expressing our misgivings about some elements of the bill. But the tone, I think, had become quite combative in recent weeks. And there was this kind of repeated suggestion that if you were opposed to the proposals, it was because, you know, you didn't care enough about rape victims and that, you know, we really needed to be doing this to make sure that people weren't having to wait years for their day in court. And I found that really quite kind of personally affronting. It was about a week ago where I think I reached the point of, you know, this being a decision that I was then weighing up, but the decision to do it, and actually the speech that I wrote, I wrote a few hours beforehand, almost in one kind of stream of consciousness, because I was really going backwards and forwards on what it meant on a personal level, to not just speak out about my own experiences, but to do that in opposition to proposals from my own party, my own government, a party I've been a member of since I was 16 years old. It's not a small decision.

Interviewer (7:06)

And how did you feel when the speaker called your name?

Charlotte Nicholls (7:10)

Nervous. I had gone into the chamber about an hour before the debate and there were two of my friends who were also MPs that I asked to be kind of sat with me at Stella Creasy and Sarah hall. And I just was doing a lot of kind of box breathing exercises and things like that to try to get myself into the headspace where I could say what I wanted to say without either completely garbling it or just crying or bottling it at the last minute.

Parliament Speaker (7:49)

In this debate, experiences like mine feel like they've been weaponised and are being used for rhetorical misdirection for what this bill actually is. The violence against women and girls sector haven't had the opportunity to come together to discuss it, and the government's framing and narrative has been to pit survivors and defendants against each other in a way I think is deeply damaging.

Interviewer (8:11)

The instant that you talked about in Parliament, it took place back in 2021, after you attended, I think, an important football match played by one of your local teams in Warrington. Can you tell me about that day?

Charlotte Nicholls (8:26)

So, following the match, there was a kind of meal and reception and that sort of thing at a hotel that, you know, myself as the mp, the mayor and other people were invited to attend alongside, obviously, the club and, you know, friends, family, that sort of thing.

Helen Pitt (8:50)

And you ended up at the hotel. And to cut a long story short, you ended up staying in the room

Interviewer (8:56)

of one of the players.

Helen Pitt (8:57)

And you told the court, didn't you? That you had had consensual sex with him once, but that you woke up to find him having sex with you again and biting you, and that you hadn't consented to either of those things. And he's always insisted that everything that happened in that hotel room was consensual, and it was between two consenting adults. And that's what he said when he gave evidence. Ultimately, the jury did believe him because he was acquitted of raping you twice and also of sending naked photos of you to his teammates with the intent to cause you distress. And I just wanted to talk a little bit first about the photos, if that's okay, because, you know, I attended some of the trial and that was one of the most, I thought, quite startling aspects of it. Because he admitted taking and sharing naked photos of you, didn't he?

Charlotte Nicholls (9:44)

Yes.

Helen Pitt (9:44)

So he told the jury that he regretted sending photos of your naked breasts to his teammates and asking, quote, anyone want to go with a crying with laughter emoji? And then one of his mates, one of the other players in the group chat, replied, show us her gash. And then he sent another photo about 4 in the morning, which showed your vagina. How do you understand that not guilty verdict about the photos?

Charlotte Nicholls (10:12)

In some respects, I'll never fully understand because juries don't have to give reasons for their verdicts. But certainly in the conversations that I had with the CPS following the trial and conversations with, you know, kind of legal professionals, we think it hinged on what's called the intent provision. So obviously, photos were taken, they were shared without my consent. That much he freely admitted to that. That part of it is not in dispute. But at the time, there was an intent provision that said that it had to have been done with the intent to cause alarm or distress for the crime to have occurred.

Interviewer (11:00)

Yeah.

Charlotte Nicholls (11:01)

He says that firstly, he never expected that I would find out, and that secondly, I think his defense was, you know, I don't know why I did it. I was just being a lad. And by definition, that isn't with the intent to cause alarm or distress. That intent provision no longer exists, I do believe, were the case to take place today in similar circumstances, that he could not be acquitted. Now for that particular aspect.

Helen Pitt (11:45)

Yeah. So it was never in question that

Interviewer (11:48)

he had done it.

Charlotte Nicholls (11:49)

No. And I think it's clear both from the fact that I was unconscious in the photo and therefore couldn't possibly have consented and that that aspect of it, as I said, is not in dispute.

Interviewer (12:03)

How did you find out about those photos?

Charlotte Nicholls (12:05)

I found out about those photos about three months or so after it happened because I had been to a football match at the club and I was speaking afterwards to the manager.

Interviewer (12:24)

So you were telling him about that night in the hotel?

Charlotte Nicholls (12:27)

Yep. But then he basically said, this makes sense now because he'd seen the photos. He said that on the bus on the way back to Warrington that one of the other players had made it known to him that these photos were in the group chat and that he and the owner at the time of the club had basically kicked him off the bus and made everyone delete those photos. And he was reassuring me that, you know, they had watched them all delete them and, you know, that they were really sorry and so on. And that was. After that conversation. I went home. I only live a short walk from the club and I contemplated killing myself. I was on the phone to the Samaritans for hours.

Interviewer (13:48)

Charlotte, I'm sorry.

Charlotte Nicholls (13:49)

Because I thought, well, there's photos of me now out there. I can't know how far they've gone. He'd made assurances to me that, you know, they. They'd watched them be deleted and so on, but I had no idea how many people had seen them, how many people had been sent them, where they could end up. And I felt like my life was completely over. There has been times in the kind of intervening couple of years where every time I open my phone, then I've suddenly got loads of notifications or what have you. You know, I have a panic attack thinking, oh, is this the day that someone's put them on Twitter or what have you? Every person that I walked past on my way home, I was wondering whether they'd seen them. It was just. It was a humiliation on top of a humiliation.

Interviewer (14:57)

Was your face visible in the pictures

Charlotte Nicholls (15:00)

in one of them? I think so.

Interviewer (15:02)

They knew the lads on the bus knew who they were looking at. They knew they were looking at their local MP asleep and naked. Right. And none of them, as far as you know, raised objections or concerns until the manager says that and the owner, that they intervened.

Charlotte Nicholls (15:20)

Yep.

Interviewer (15:30)

I did attend one day of your trial, including some of your cross examination, and a lot of that was about certain things that you said and did the morning after. And one of them was an interview that you gave from the hotel room. So the morning after, and I think it was a live interview with BBC Politics.

Charlotte Nicholls (15:54)

Politics Northwest.

Helen Pitt (15:55)

Yeah.

Charlotte Nicholls (15:55)

Yeah.

Interviewer (15:56)

And the defence barrister suggested to you that if you'd been raped, you'd have been desperate to get out of that room as Quickly as possible. And I think you told the jury that you were on autopilot. Would you be able to talk a little bit more about that?

Charlotte Nicholls (16:09)

Yeah, it was a strange one because I felt kind of completely outside my own body. I think everyone kind of has an idea about how they might respond in a certain circumstance, and everyone's very aware of a kind of fight or flight response. But there's another response. I think it's officially called form, but it's this kind of. Once you realize that you can't get out of a situation, you just kind of do in the moment what you need to do to keep yourself safe. I had known the previous evening that I was going to have to do this interview, and I couldn't really see any way of getting out of it without kind of having to articulate what had happened. Yeah, he was still there. And I kind of felt, well, if I do this and kind of appear normal to him and I don't say anything that's gonna antagonize him or, you know, make him hurt me worse than I've already been hurt, I can safely then leave. And I did, and I went back home. And I remember catching sight of myself in my bathroom mirror and I just had this totally ghosty expression, like I didn't recognize the person looking back at me. And I went into work the next day, was in the chamber, you know, doing all the usual things. And it was that evening I was watching a United match with one of my friends after work, and when they scored, he kind of touched my shoulder, like, you know. Yeah. Oh. And both because where he'd touched, I had a quite deep bite mark, so it physically hurt. But also the sensation of being kind of touched by a man, that was kind of the penny drop moment of, oh, fuck, this is what happened. It sounds really odd to explain to another person to say it took me a full 48 hours to kind of mentally accept it. Like I was so far outside myself at that time. And I was later diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and a dissociative disorder.

Helen Pitt (19:34)

The jury heard and saw pictures of

Interviewer (19:36)

the bruises and the bite marks.

Helen Pitt (19:39)

These were photos taken both by Charlotte and her gp, because she went to see her doctor just a few days after that night and told them what had happened. When the footballer gave evidence, he said he, too was left with bite marks, including on his groin, but that it was all part of the consensual sex they had. He told the jury that Charlotte seemed fine when she left the following morning,

Interviewer (20:08)

And a lot was made in court about various messages that you were exchanging with your best friend the morning after. And then in the days, the weeks and I think months afterwards, as you were grappling with whether you were going to go to the police or not. And as you've already explained, your understanding of what had happened that night wasn't immediate.

Helen Pitt (20:34)

And there was a message that you sent to your best friend the day

Interviewer (20:37)

after that was made a lot of by the defence.

Helen Pitt (20:41)

And that message said, got extremely pissed last night and you said that you'd had to do an interview in the hotel room of one of the players and you ended that text with Lol.

Interviewer (20:52)

Lol.

Helen Pitt (20:54)

And then with the same friend. There's various messages where you're sort of disclosing to her, aren't you, bit by bit that actually what happened wasn't Lol. Can you talk to me a bit about that?

Charlotte Nicholls (21:06)

I think I've always had a bit of a dark sense of humor. I think I often use humor as a way of kind of dealing with things or kind of batting it off as, like, you know, my mum always gets annoyed with me because whenever I've spoken about my time in psychiatric hospital, I sort of. I'm often like, oh, when I was in the funny farm, Lol. And she's like, one, it's not the funny farm, and two, like, there's nothing Lol about that. Yeah. I think part of it is, again, coming to terms with it. I didn't want it to be what it was and it's almost like, oh, well, if I, like, make a joke about this and I'm kind of haha about it, it's. It's not that,

Helen Pitt (22:07)

but I think.

Interviewer (22:07)

When you disclosed to your best friend, did you send her pictures of the bruises and the bites?

Charlotte Nicholls (22:12)

I sent her a picture of the bite marks all down my back. There were others in other more kind of intimate places that I didn't share with her. I mean, it'd be really weird to send your friend a picture of a, you know, bite mark on your boob and, you know, inner thigh and things.

Interviewer (22:41)

You've already alluded to being sectioned and suffering from ptsd. Do you mind talking a bit about that?

Charlotte Nicholls (22:49)

Yeah. So the time I spent in psychiatric hospital was in November 2021. I had some quite kind of intensive therapy and support there, including starting emdr, which is a specific sort of form of treatment for PTSD that I've found to be very effective. PTSD isn't something you can get cured of. It's something that I. I live with now, but over time having a better understanding of how to manage it, you know, what the things are that set me off and stuff like that. You know, it's increasingly something that I can live alongside and manage, rather than it being something that, you know, as it was initially kind of took over my whole life.

Interviewer (23:53)

And how long were you sectioned for?

Charlotte Nicholls (23:55)

It was about 20 days, something like that. I was there for about three weeks.

Helen Pitt (24:04)

Was it well known in Parliament?

Charlotte Nicholls (24:06)

No.

Interviewer (24:07)

So it was kept a secret?

Charlotte Nicholls (24:09)

Yeah. I disclosed on coming out that that's where I'd been because by definition, there was a lot that I'd missed during that time. I hadn't been there, as I am every year at the Cenotaph in Warrington for Remembrance Sunday. I'd missed a number of key votes. This was before we had the proxy system that's in place now. People rightly wanted to know why I wasn't at all of these things. And I kind of put something out that just said, look, you know, I've been in hospital, I'm now out, but it's going to take me a little bit of time to get, you know, back to normal, kind of, you know, be. Be gentle with me.

Interviewer (25:16)

And then. So you. You made an official police complaint and he was ultimately charged with two counts of rape, as well as a charge related to the making and sharing of those photos of you. And you then waited a long time for the case to reach trial.

Charlotte Nicholls (25:34)

It was more than a thousand days, 10, 88 days.

Interviewer (25:38)

What was it like wasting all of that time?

Charlotte Nicholls (25:41)

It was horrific. Your fate is completely in other people's hands. You have no control or agency throughout the process. You're just in this kind of. This constant limbo.

Interviewer (26:01)

And then finally, in May 2024, the case reached trial and you gave evidence in court behind a screen. What was that like?

Charlotte Nicholls (26:15)

I felt completely humiliated. In the experience. There was a lot of work that I'd done in therapy because I. I blamed myself a lot for what had happened and I'd spent a lot of time unpacking that, only to kind of have that all undone. It's like having a bruise punch and all the. All the worst things that, you know, you think about yourself, they're going for. There were two charges of rape and one of the kind of contentions put to me was basically, well, why did you let him do it a second time? Why didn't you leave after the first one? And of course, you know, obviously that's something I ask myself. You want to think that you would, you Know, scream and fight and run away or what have you. Like, you know, you want to think you'd respond a certain way, but you get let down by your own body and you kick yourself for that afterwards. You know, why didn't I, you know, gouge his eyes out? Do you know what I mean? Like, it's, you know, that's. But I. I couldn't in that moment. It wasn't. You're like, you're so powerless. And having that bruise punched, as I said, really stings. There's no other way of putting it. You know, you can have all of your friends and family and, you know, medical professionals who've got a sort of trauma informed perspective tell you that, you know, it's not your fault what happened to you, and you're not to blame, and you're not, you know, and as I said, they're there going, it is your fault. And also, you're a liar.

Interviewer (28:41)

And I guess when you're in the witness box, you're not just answering questions about that night, but also all kinds of other things that you have said and done over the years. From tweets that you had sent slagging off Suella Braverman.

Charlotte Nicholls (28:57)

Do you remember that? Yeah. That was quite surreal, being a bit like, oh, well, you once told Suella Braverman to fuck off on Twitter, so why couldn't you fight your rapist off?

Interviewer (29:08)

Yeah.

Helen Pitt (29:08)

That was the implication, wasn't it, that

Interviewer (29:10)

you're a feisty young lady. Come on. Yeah. If you can tell her to fuck off, then you could have told this guy as well.

Charlotte Nicholls (29:19)

Yeah.

Interviewer (29:20)

Also quite a lot made of drink. If you're drinking, socializing, everything about your life and the way you led it was put to the jury as evidence either of your untrustworthiness or looseness or.

Charlotte Nicholls (29:38)

Yeah, every. Every kind of negative stereotype, every kind of personal attack, every. You know, I felt like I was the one on trial.

Interviewer (29:49)

Yeah.

Charlotte Nicholls (29:51)

And, you know, my. My character, my. My values, my. You know, all of these things, these. These are being pulled apart to attack my credibility.

Interviewer (30:19)

And talk me through the day that the jury returned their verdicts.

Charlotte Nicholls (30:23)

So I was in Parliament. I'd come in because I had constituents who were at the infected blood inquiry, and I was attending that with them, and I got a phone call, and there's a quiet room behind the Speaker's chair called the lady members room, and I went in there and she gave me the news, and I completely fell apart. Another mp, who's a friend of mine came to come and get me, and I stayed at her house that night because I couldn't, I couldn't be alone. I was signed off work for two months to give me a bit of space to kind of come to terms with it, with the expectation that the general election would be sort of that autumn. And then the next day Rishi Sunak stood outside number 10 in the rain and said that we were going to have the general election in six weeks time. I find it quite weird now looking at some of the photos of the 2024 general election campaign. I'd lost an awful lot of weight.

Interviewer (32:06)

You looked very skinny. I saw you during that time. Yeah.

Charlotte Nicholls (32:10)

There's a photo of me having kind of put my nomination paperwork and stuff in, sort of standing outside Warrington Town hall and you can see my hip bones through my dress and stuff like I'm. I was really unwell. All of the kind of advice was that it was obviously not in my best interest to put myself through that campaign. I did consider taking that advice, but the thing that ultimately where I made that decision was thinking, do you know what? I can white knuckle it through the next six weeks. A general election campaign as the candidate is a 24 hour a day thing. So I thought actually having a period of time where I didn't have a minute to be alone with my own thoughts and what have you, that it would be in and of itself a distraction, but actually more fundamentally, as it looked like we were heading into a Labour government that perhaps out of the wreckage of my experiences I could use what happened to do something good. And that was that thought was the thing that took me through that campaign.

Interviewer (33:53)

And you won your seat. Labour won a landslide victory. And I know that you've got a letter on the side here in your office that you were wanting to show me and it relates to another process that you went through after you didn't get the verdict that you wanted and after the acquittals. You want to tell me about, tell me about the letter and what the process was.

Charlotte Nicholls (34:17)

Yeah. So can you have a look? Yeah,

Interviewer (34:24)

talk me through this.

Charlotte Nicholls (34:26)

So I came home to it one night kind of on my doormat, opened it and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority exists as a method for civil remedy and it is available to anyone who's been a victim of a violent crime, including in cases where either a perpetrator is never identified. And it's a parallel process to the court process. And I've been awarded compensation according to the set list of tariffs for those offences, which in the case of rape is £11,000

Helen Pitt (35:30)

to be clear, this letter does not overturn the jury's verdicts. What it is is a successful claim for compensation made after the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority assessed her claim on the basis of information from her, the police and her independent sexual violence advisor. But to Charlotte, receiving it has helped her find closure.

Charlotte Nicholls (35:53)

It was this flood of relief. I didn't get the verdict that I wanted in court. And it's a piece of paper that I take backwards and forwards with me every week despite the fact, you know, two years on from getting it, it's the most valuable thing I own because this letter says, we believe you. And despite everything, it's, it's the first thing I'd save from, you know, my house burning down. I mean, I'm sure I could ask them in that circumstance for another copy of the letter. You know, I'm sure I'd get it, but it's. It means everything.

Helen Pitt (37:01)

Coming up, how Charlotte thinks the criminal justice system needs to change to better support rape complainants.

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Interviewer (39:12)

You were speaking out against the government's plans to scrap jury trials, and yet I think the plan still passed.

Helen Pitt (39:19)

Do you think that you made a difference?

Charlotte Nicholls (39:22)

I don't know is the simple answer. I mean, there were around 90 abstentions, obviously, 10 MPs who voted against. I personally abstained in the hope that what I said and the misgivings of a lot of our colleagues from a range of different perspectives, whether it's, you know, people with a kind of background in criminal law, whether it's people that have got some really difficult experiences with constituents who've been, you know, defendants and their rights and so on, or people in my case who have concerns from a kind of victim's perspective. I'm hoping that we have the opportunity for those things to be listened to, for the bill to be amended, and of course, at third reading, if it's not, I think there's a lot of us that are prepared to do what we can to ensure that it doesn't pass at that stage.

Interviewer (40:17)

So a rape trial will always be heard at the Crown Court.

Charlotte Nicholls (40:20)

So it's not. It's an indictable offence. So it would only ever be heard at the Crown Court, except in cases where the perpetrator was under 18, where it would be heard in the Youth Court.

Interviewer (40:31)

Right. But would, under the new proposals, could they ever be heard without a jury?

Charlotte Nicholls (40:36)

No.

Interviewer (40:37)

No. So, right.

Charlotte Nicholls (40:38)

And this is part of why I was as annoyed as I was about the fact that rape cases and rape victims were getting used as the reason for driving through these proposals that are at best only tangentially relevant, which is to say, well, if we remove some of these other cases from the backlog by the removal of the right to jury, that's a few less cases that would be sat in front of you as a rape victim. So maybe you get to have your day in court marginally faster.

Interviewer (41:15)

But you don't buy that?

Charlotte Nicholls (41:16)

I don't buy it at all. And actually, there's modelling, both from the Institute for Government and the Criminal Bar association, who both say that, you know, at best you would be looking at perhaps a 1 to 2% reduction in wait times.

Interviewer (41:36)

And you said that there were other things that the criminal justice system could do that would much improve the experience of complainants in sex cases. What specifically are you thinking about?

Charlotte Nicholls (41:48)

So there's a really brilliant report by Rape Crisis England and Wales called Living in Limbo, which has five key recommendations for the government. But even looking into our own manifesto that we were all elected on, it speaks about the introduction of specialist rape courts. And we all agree, I think everyone does, that having to wait years to go to trial is intolerable.

Interviewer (42:18)

Yeah. For everybody involved, the defendants as well, to be fair. Yeah.

Charlotte Nicholls (42:22)

And we said in our manifesto that we were going to bring forward the specialist courts where people would have better support, where, you know, the process would be kind of trauma informed, where, you know, juries would be educated on kind of rape myths and stereotypes to help guide them in their decision making, but that ultimately rape victims wouldn't be sat in the backlog of other Crown Court cases. I mean, to me, that seems the most obvious place to start.

Interviewer (43:04)

And we started this conversation by you talking about the response that you've received to your speech in Parliament. And you said that you had worried about that you might be opening up Pandora's box and that people will be

Helen Pitt (43:19)

using it as an excuse to call

Interviewer (43:21)

you a liar and so forth. Has any of that happened?

Charlotte Nicholls (43:24)

I mean, there's been a bit of it on social media and I'm sure that will continue. But actually, overwhelmingly, the response has been very positive, very supportive. And I'm trying, I guess, to focus on the, the positive, despite the fact that I feel like I was let down by the justice system as a, as a Member of Parliament, as someone that has parliamentary privilege, you know, I, I have the ability to speak about my experiences in a way that survivors more broadly don't. You know, all I can do is tell my story, hope that it helps someone else and that some kind of meaningful change can come as a result.

Helen Pitt (44:47)

That was Charlotte Nicholls, mp. My thanks to her. You can read my interview with her@theguardian.com we contacted the man who was acquitted of raping Charlotte and he declined to comment. Before we go, I wanted to recommend a new Guardian series. The Guardian Investigates podcast has launched Off Duty, a new seven part series with reporter Melissa Segura. And in 2011, a Chicago police officer was murdered. Police identified four suspects. Three confessed, but the fourth refused to break. He embarked on a 12 year battle to prove his innocence against a system that refused to admit it might be wrong. Subscribe to the Guardian Investigates feed or listen wherever you get your podcasts. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Eli Block and presented by me, Helen Pidduck. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Elizabeth Kassin. We'll be back in your feeds later today with the latest.

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