The Lies My ‘Loverboy’ Told Me™

Victims of rape and serious sexual assault who face their cases being dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service will be given the right to request a review under a government pilot. The six-month scheme, which will launch on Friday in the West Midlands, will give victims the right to ask for their case to be reviewed by a different prosecutor if the CPS indicates it intends to offer no evidence. The reform is backed by the attorney general and solicitor general and forms part of the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls. Campaigners have long called for the change. Criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction, but this reform strengthens the right of victims to challenge the decision. Though a right to review already exists, it cannot be exercised when the case has been stopped in court. Under the terms of the pilot, for the first time victims of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offer...

This is the story of my friend Dolly She told it to me only one day after we met. I’ll never forget that soft and warm afternoon in June, with an orange sun hiding behind a tall building on Hollywood Boulevard, and my face wet with the stain of silent tears. ‘A lot of first things happened that year,’ Dolly said with a blank look in her eye, while soothing an imaginary painful spot underneath her ear. ‘It was my first time doing cocaine, my first time having sex — although not by choice — the first time getting pregnant, and the first time getting trafficked. It was a hell of a year!’ One hot summer day, as she was enjoying a date with her boyfriend on the beach in Atlantic City, where she was living at the time, Dolly’s life was cut short. He raped her, kidnapped her, and sold her into prostitution. At the time, Dolly was 15 years old and a virgin. Nobody went looking for her: she came from a broken home; her mother was absent and cold, and her father had made a new family with a much...