rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/letter/the-gaia-principle-letter-action?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-letter-area-the-gaia-principle-letter-action' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> Justice For Gaia https://actionnetwork.org/groups/justice-for-gaia https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/letters/photos/000/278/760/normal/Gaia_Bethany_AN_Cover.png Please use this quick letter writing tool to support the Gaia Principle, which will honour Gaia’s memory by uniting survivors’ voices for justice and ensure that what happened to her cannot happen again and the police are held to account for investigative failures around serial perpetrators of rape and serious sexual assault. The Gaia Principle will do this by making sure that a "he-said-they-said" case is never again presented to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as a "he-said-she-said" because investigating officers failed to join the dots between multiple people making similar allegations against the same suspect. This is what happened in the case of Gaia Pope-Sutherland, who died a preventable death at the age of 19 less than two years after she reported to police that she had been a victim of child sexual exploitation. Gaia lost her life following a series of systemic failings by Police, NHS and social services and her story was explored in the recent BBC3 documentary, Gaia: A Death on Dancing Ledge. In 2022 an inquest into her death exposed more than 50 failings by police, NHS and social services. Amongst these, was a failure by Dorset Police to present the case as a whole to the Crown Prosecution Service, including similar allegations by a significant number of other women against the same perpetrator, a now twice convicted child sex offender. In fact, the alleged perpetrator was already under investigation by Dorset Police for child sex offences before he first contacted Gaia via social media. That Gaia’s allegation, in fact one of many, was presented to the CPS in isolation will inevitably have contributed to the decision not to take her case forwards. This meant major delays in the eventual conviction of a serious sexual predator and had a devastating impact on Gaia’s mental health, which ultimately contributed to her death at the age of nineteen. New guidance encouraging officers to link cases in which multiple independent witnesses have made allegations against the same suspect is a welcome step forwards. However, it falls short of what is needed, particularly in the current context of dwindling public trust in the criminal justice system in part due to a collapse in prosecution rates so severe it amounts to effective decriminalisation: of the tiny minority of rape survivors whose cases make it to court, less than 1 in 100 secure a guilty verdict. Gaia’s story is a powerful illustration of the need for accountability in policing when officers fail to follow, or are not even aware of, current guidance. As the inquest into Gaia's death proved, this is all too often the case. The Gaia Principle, which should be a compulsory part of case building that both existing and newly recruited Officers must be trained in, would set out the expectation that independent allegations against the same suspect are not only linked but are presented as a whole for the Crown Prosecution Service to make informed decisions in light of all available evidence. The Gaia Principle also stipulates that failure to do this will be considered a professional standards issue and that repeated failure to follow guidance may be considered a misconduct matter. In this way, the Gaia Principle will provide meaningful accountability and help ensure that improved guidance to the way police investigate prolific offenders leads to real change on the ground. By preventing a repeat of some of the systemic failures that contributed to Gaia’s death, it will protect not only survivors of sexual violence but also the general public. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/the-gaia-principle-letter-action