Woman calls for apology over Newcastle rape trial collapse

A woman who said she was repeatedly raped by a gang has told how she has lost confidence in the judicial system after the case against them collapsed.

One woman and 13 men were found not guilty after Northumbria Police did not secure evidence properly or comply with investigation guidelines.

The woman said she had not had a proper apology or been told why it collapsed.

Northumbria Police said the force had apologised and was carrying out an internal review.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was 12 at the time of the alleged abuse.

Police believe she was one of three children groomed by a group of older men she met in Newcastle City Centre.

The woman said she was taken to parties in the city's West End and plied with alcohol before being abused.

She was approached by police in 2016 to give evidence after another woman told officers she was a victim of a grooming gang.

"I was promised they would never see the light of day - many times. I was told they would go to prison for a very long time," she said.

The woman has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of reliving the experiences of her childhood.

The 14 defendants had denied trafficking and raping young girls.

In March the case collapsed at Newcastle Crown Court when a detective revealed that she had written key evidence in personal notebooks that were not kept in the same way as official police notebooks.

These notebooks had not been subjected to the same rules as the official notebooks and crucially were not disclosed to the defence teams. This undermined the whole case.

The woman said: "If somebody's done something wrong then the right action needs to be taken against them. But they need to say sorry and be accountable for what they've done."

Northumbria Police said because the internal review was continuing it was "not appropriate to comment further at this stage".

In the run up to the case, the woman's address was mistakenly revealed by the Crown Prosecution Service to the legal teams working on behalf of the defendants.

The CPS said in a statement it was part of a joint review with the police into why the trial collapsed.

When the review was complete, it said, the CPS was "committed to implementing all appropriate recommendations to better ensure the integrity of investigations and prosecutions".

The woman's lawyer, Richard Hardy, said he believed there should be an independent investigation.

You can watch more on this story on BBC Inside Out in the North East & Cumbria on BBC One at 19:30 on Monday 23 September and afterwards on the iPlayer.