RAPE and sexual abuse victims are suffering from the “disastrous impact” of an increasing backlog in the crown courts, a damning report revealed today.

The charity Rape Crisis England and Wales said that its Breaking Point report outlines how a crisis in the crown courts has led to a record high logjam of 7,859 sexual offence cases and 1,851 adult rape cases.

Its freedom of information request to HM Courts and Tribunal Service revealed that the number of vacated and ineffective, “therefore delayed,” rape trials more than doubled from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022.

And the number of trials that were postponed at least once surged by 133 per cent.

The number of cases with three or more previous trial dates has almost doubled and there were five times as many hearings that had been rescheduled six or more times.

Survivors of rape and other sexual offences are “waiting the longest out of everyone to have their experiences heard in court, with an average wait of 839 days from report to completion in court,” the charity said.

The charity’s chief executive Jayne Butler said: “The postponing and rescheduling of cases multiple times is devastating the mental wellbeing of victims and survivors. They are being harmed by the criminal justice system.

“Whether intentional or not, [rescheduled cases and changes they were not informed about] further marginalises victims and survivors, who already feel de-prioritised in an imbalanced system.

“All of this is why we’ve long been calling for the establishment of specialist sexual violence and abuse courts, where court staff and judiciary would have trauma-informed training.”

The group is also calling for rape and sexual abuse cases to be given “priority listing,” which would see them moved much more quickly through the system and give them a guaranteed court date.

Shadow justice minister Ellie Reeves said: “After 13 years of failure, the Conservatives are missing in action in the fight to tackle violence against women and girls.

“The number of CPS staff and courts has fallen since 2010, and the government has left the system powerless to deal with the largest courts backlog on record.

“Rape survivors are now denied justice for years, with a fraction of the number of rapists being punished.”

The Ministry of Justice said the government is delivering “real improvements in the response to rape,” but acknowledged that more needs to be done.