WIN: Police admit they failed Nina Cresswell

Content warning: sexual assault

The campaigner Nina Cresswell says she’s “vindicated”, after Northumbria Police admitted they failed her when she reported a sexual assault.

“It’s proof they can be held to account – if I can do it as a working-class woman from the north-east, others can too,” Nina said. “The more people are able to take action when the police have failed them, the more this all-too-common conduct is brought into the public eye. The more scrutiny they face, the more they’ll be forced to change.”

On the night she was attacked in 2010, Nina reported to police officers in Sunderland that she had been sexually assaulted. Instead of investigating, officers told her within hours that no crime had been committed. That failure changed the course of her life.

Ten years later, when Nina later spoke out about the man who assaulted her, he sued her for defamation and dragged her into a three-year legal battle. With Good Law Project’s support, she fought back – and won. The court found she had spoken in the public interest and told the truth, setting a landmark precedent that survivors cannot be silenced.

But none of that should have been necessary.

If Northumbria Police had done their job in 2010, Nina would never have had to fight for justice – forcing her to close her business and pushing her to the brink. That’s why Good Law Project helped her to bring a legal claim against the force.

Her relentless fight has led to another victory. Northumbria Police have now admitted that “errors” made in 2010  breached their duty to investigate and that a proper investigation would have had “a real prospect of achieving a different outcome”.

Holding the police to account won’t give Nina back the years she lost. But it shows that even the most powerful public bodies can be challenged – and made to answer for the harm they cause. 

According to Cat Knight, deputy head of legal at Good Law Project, Nina’s fight “has always been bigger than one person”. 

“It’s about every survivor who deserves to be believed, every report that deserves to be properly investigated, and every public body that must be held to the standards it owes the people it serves,” Knight said.

That’s why Good Law Project exists. We stand with people taking on powerful institutions, to make sure that power never comes without accountability.

Nina has shown that survivors can take on the police – and win. We’ll keep fighting so that no-one else has to fight this hard just to be heard. Join us.