I was subject to a ‘digital strip search’ by the police after reporting my rape

*This article contains references to rape and sexual assault.*

Today (31 May 2022), the Information Commissioner’s Office has called on the criminal justice sector to stop collecting “excessive amounts of personal information from victims of rape and serious sexual assault cases.” 

In the report, John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner said, “Victims are being treated as suspects, and people feel re-victimised by a system they expect to support them […] Change is required to rebuild trust that will enable more victims to seek the justice to which they’re entitled.”

In light of the report, Deborah Linton spoke to Emily (34), a rape survivor with first-hand experience of what it’s like to report this crime to the police. This is her story.

In some ways the investigation into my rape, at the hands of my ex-husband, was worse than the attack itself. In my most vulnerable moment, what followed was a digital strip search.

The police wanted to pick apart my whole life, to lay everything bare; mining 32 years of personal data to judge – not if a crime had happened – but whether or not I made a ‘good victim’.

A report out today, by Britain’s data watchdog, describes this intrusive process as “re-victimisation” and calls for whole-system change that will bring it to an end; a demand that, as a survivor, I desperately hope will be met by lawmakers and welcomed by politicians.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) points to a “distressing picture” of how rape and sexual assault victims are treated by police and the legal system, where we are told to hand over consent to “extraordinary” and “disproportionate amounts of often irrelevant but deeply personal information” about our lives in the aftermath of an attack.

It calls for an end to the use of ‘Stafford statements’, the documents that expect victims, like me, to sign over blanket consent to their personal data – from phones to school and medical records – not for the period when a crime is alleged to have happened but all the way back to childhood, without further justification.

When I reported an assault by my ex, in summer 2019, for which he later pleaded guilty, I also felt ready to report a rape, by him, which had taken place a year earlier. (At the time I was too afraid of losing him; that’s how abuse works.)

Within ten days, police asked for a full download of my mobile phone, from contacts and call logs to messages, location data, web history and social media, along with access to my medical records, for the duration of my relationship. When it was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) they wanted access to my medical records from birth, including mental health and counselling sessions, as well as school reports, university logs, and social services records from every address I’d lived at.

When I asked, ‘Why?’ they told me: ‘To see if you’re of good character’. My own data was being used as a way to investigate me, not the perpetrator. I became an advocate for myself in the face of suspicion, negativity, and derision from the police.

The ICO describes this as a system that treats victims as suspects – victims who are more likely to be female, more likely to have a disability and more likely to identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Tragically, there are too many instances of these very identifiers being used by institutions to discredit or disadvantage people seeking help or justice.