Terrified, shocked and traumatised, Nina Cresswell had just managed to flee the grip of the man who she says violently sexually assaulted her when she called the police to report what happened to her.
Shaken after her ordeal, officers arrived at her home, where she expected to be listened to, for evidence to be checked for and taken, and to be assured that the force would do what it could to find her attacker.
Instead, she said her account was dismissed because she was drunk and officers failed to interview her when she was sober. Within hours, police decided not to record the attack as a crime.
That marked the start of more than 15 years of unnecessary “hell”, the 35-year-old said, as she battled through the “traumatisation after traumatisation women face just to try and get basic justice”.
Now, she is suing Northumbria Police to ensure no other survivors have to endure the same ordeal. She claims the force breached her human rights by failing to conduct a proper investigation, which meant there was “at least a substantial chance” that the outcome would have been different and that the alleged perpetrator could have faced punishment.
Ms Creswell told The Independent: “It’s so infuriating, because I’ve had to do their [the police’s] job for them – this was 15 years ago, and I’m still talking about it. If they’d just done their jobs that night, properly investigated, got evidence, done the stuff they should’ve done, then I wouldn’t have been forced to do what I had to do.
“So many women around the country are in the position I was in, or who don’t make it out alive from the attack, or who lose their lives because of the psychological torment that comes from these assaults and silencings – it makes me feel really mad.
“Even though it nearly killed me, I would do it all again because I just couldn’t not.”
Despite the police reopening their investigation twice and finding that there was not enough evidence for a realistic prospect of securing a criminal conviction, a civil High Court judge ruled in 2023 that Ms Cresswell had been “violently sexually assaulted” by William Hay, known as Billy, in the early hours of 28 May 2010, after the pair met at a nightclub in Sunderland. In a criminal conviction, the burden of proof requires a person to be guilty “beyond reasonable doubt”, but in civil cases, it is decided on the “balance of probabilities”, which is a lower threshold.
The civil ruling was part of a defamation case that Hay brought against Ms Cresswell, after she named him as her attacker online in 2020, amid the Me Too movement, in an attempt to protect other women from him.
In that case, the police log detailed Ms Cresswell’s report to officers on 28 May 2010, where she said a man “pinned her down and tried to have sex with her” before “she had to run away from him”.
The judge described Ms Cresswell’s subsequent treatment by police as “deficient” and damned their investigation as “superficial”. Mrs Justice Heather Williams said: “She was interviewed whilst she was still affected by alcohol and had not slept. She was not given the chance to check any record that officers had made of what they believed she had said… [The officers] failed to undertake the fuller investigation that was warranted and prematurely assessed and rejected her credibility, deciding not to treat the defendant’s allegation as a crime within hours of her first report to police.”
Following the High Court judgment and a further complaint by Ms Cresswell in 2023, an internal investigation by Northumbria Police completed last year, found “the original 2010 investigation fell below the standards of investigation expected in today’s policing”. It said the service provided to her was “not acceptable”, and the force apologised.
Northumbria Police also reopened Ms Cresswell’s case in 2020 after she contacted them, and this time they treated it as a criminal matter. However, following an investigation deemed “acceptable” by the force’s internal report, no further action was taken by police.
The force reopened the case again in 2023 but closed it again last year “due to evidential reasons”. “Should any new information come forward, this will be reviewed,” a spokesperson for the force said.
Ms Cresswell described how the “exhausting” ordeal has taken a severe toll on her. “I lost everything,” she said, including her house and her business due to legal costs.
“The focus ended up being less on the perpetrator and more on me – I was the defendant. It chews so many women up inside, holding the perpetrator’s shame for so many years – and knowing they could do it again. Then you get the institutional betrayal from police who are supposed to be protecting you…
“[But] this time it feels like the shoe is on the other foot – I’m the claimant.”
The January deadline for the force to respond to her legal action has now passed. A spokesperson for the force said: “This is in the process of being considered, and it would be inappropriate to comment any further.”
Ms Cresswell said she wants the force to publicly acknowledge failures made over her report of sexual assault, as well as to push for broader systemic change within the police. “That will at least be something positive from all this hell I’ve been put through,” she said. “The more people who hold the police to account publicly, the more it’s in the public eye, the more scrutiny they get, and the more they’ll be forced to change.”
Catherine Knight, senior solicitor at non-profit Good Law Project, which is supporting Ms Cresswell’s legal claim and has set up a fundraiser for her case, said: “It’s time for police forces to protect women, instead of giving them the brush off.”
Harriet Dowse-Bland, a solicitor at charity Centre for Women’s Justice, said: “Sadly, we do regularly see under-resourced police investigations that are characterised by long delays, lack of access to support services, and investigating the victim more than the suspect. If we want a legal system that genuinely protects victims and brings perpetrators of sexual offences to justice, this needs to change.”
In the year ending March 2025, 209,556 sexual offences were reported to police in England and Wales, according to the latest government figures, with charity Rape Crisis estimating this is around only 15 per cent of actual offences that take place. Charges were brought in just 4.2 per cent of the recorded sexual offences during that same period, while Crown Prosecution Service data shows only around half of those cases result in convictions, so roughly 2 per cent.
A spokesperson for Northumbria Police said: “We have apologised for the way in which we responded to the report in 2010 and for any subsequent distress caused.
“We have further investigated a complaint linked to the report. This has now been completed and highlighted areas where the service we provided was unsatisfactory, for which we have further apologised. While no misconduct was identified, learning has been progressed.
“The outcome of the complaint also recognises that policing practices nationally have improved significantly over the past decade in relation to both the investigation of sexual offences and the support available to victims. As a force, in recent years, we have been part of the national Operation Soteria initiative, which aims to enhance outcomes for victims and bring about meaningful change in how investigations are carried out.
“We would encourage anyone who has been subjected to any sexual offence to reach out – we are here for you and we are committed to carrying out professional and diligent investigations to bring offenders to justice.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We expect the police to investigate and respond to all reports of sexual violence in a timely manner to ensure that victims and survivors are protected.
“We have declared violence against women and girls as a national emergency and are deploying the largest crackdown in British history to halve it within a decade.”
Rape Crisis’ support line can be contacted 24/7 for free on 0808 500 2222.
