We’re here around the clock to help you take the first step toward resolving your legal issue. Reach out anytime for a free initial consultation.
Let us know a convenient time and we’ll get in touch—no waiting on hold.
Someone told you to wait. Maybe it was a friend. Maybe it was another solicitor. Maybe it was just the voice in your own head telling you that the truth will come out, that the police will look properly, that the CPS will get there in the end.
I’ve sat across from enough people who believed that to tell you plainly: it isn’t true, and by the time it stops being true for you, it’s usually too late to matter.
This isn’t about doubting the system out of habit. It’s about understanding, precisely, what environment your case actually sits in, because rape, sexual assault, and historic sexual offence allegations don’t move through a neutral process. They move through a process under enormous political weight, and that weight changes decisions.
Since the End-to-End Rape Review, the CPS has been under sustained parliamentary and public pressure to increase charging rates in sexual offence cases. That pressure is real, it’s documented, and it has changed behaviour inside the system, not because prosecutors are acting in bad faith, but because organisations respond to the metrics they’re judged against.
I’m not saying that to be cynical about victims of real abuse. I’m saying it because if you’re under investigation, you need to know that a charging decision today is not made in the same climate it would have been made in fifteen years ago. Cases that might once have been quietly filed as no further action are now being pushed toward charge, and some of them shouldn’t be.
So when someone tells you to sit tight and trust that the process will land on the right answer, ask them what they think “the right answer” currently means to the person deciding it.
Most people don’t call a lawyer until they’ve already been arrested, interviewed under caution, bailed, and left waiting for a letter. By then a version of events has already been recorded. A narrative already exists. It’s rarely the version that helps you.
Pre-charge representation exists because that gap, between an allegation and a charging decision, is not empty time. It’s the only period where you can still shape what happens next by being proactive.
At Lex Vindico Group, that looks like getting disclosure the police would rather not hand over yet. It looks like putting the Full Code Test in front of the CPS early, arguing, with evidence, that there is no realistic prospect of conviction, or that prosecution isn’t in the public interest, before charge is even authorised. It looks like pointing investigators toward lines of enquiry they haven’t followed, and handing over material that undermines the account against you while it can still change the direction of the case.
None of that happens by accident, and none of it happens if you spend that window waiting for a phone call.
A charge is not a verdict, and it doesn’t end the CPS’s obligation to keep testing its own case. The Full Code Test doesn’t switch off the day someone is charged, the CPS is required to go on asking whether there’s still a realistic prospect of conviction, and whether prosecution remains in the public interest, right up to trial.
Most defendants are never told that. Most solicitors don’t act on it. In private practice, we don’t benefit from defendants going to trial, we benefit from having cases dismissed. We are proactive in doing so.
A significant part of our post-charge work involves going back through a case the CPS considers ready for trial and examining it afresh: inconsistencies between the complainant’s accounts; inaccuracies in the initial reporting; contradictions that have emerged as the case has progressed; deficiencies in disclosure; reasonable lines of enquiry that were never pursued; timelines that do not withstand scrutiny; and material that the original reviewing lawyer either did not have or failed properly to weigh. In some cases, evidence that would have assisted the defence is no longer available because of the passage of time. That does not necessarily excuse the failure to obtain it. Where investigators, acting in good faith, ought reasonably to have secured that evidence at an earlier stage but failed to do so, that failure can materially affect the evidential picture and the fairness of the prosecution. Where, taken as a whole, those matters demonstrate that the Full Code Test is no longer met, we put that case to the CPS formally. Nor do we stop after a single set of representations. We continue pressing for a full review of the file until the issues have been properly addressed. We persist with further representations where necessary, seeking a full and proper review of the case.
We’ve had cases where that pressure ended with the Crown offering “no evidence” in open court. That means, no trial. No weeks, or months spent in front of a jury on a privately funded defence with leading counsel standing beside you. No conviction sitting over a career or a professional licence, for the rest of your working life. That’s not luck. That’s what happens when a case gets reviewed properly, more than once, by people looking for reasons it shouldn’t proceed rather than reasons to “run it through the process”.
You may have seen that the CPS is rolling out its Early Victims’ Right to Review pilot nationally, after testing it in a smaller number of areas. In short: before a prosecutor discontinues a rape or serious sexual offence case, the complainant is told in advance and can ask for a second, independent prosecutor to look at that decision before it’s finalised. If the second reviewer disagrees, the case can continue.
Read about it more directly on the CPS website: https://www.cps.gov.uk/national-news/news/rape-victims-get-opportunity-case-review-prosecution-stopped-cps-rolls-out-pilot
This is not the CPS softening its approach to discontinuance, and it isn’t evidence that fighting a case post-charge is becoming a weaker strategy. It’s the opposite. It’s the CPS building in a second checkpoint specifically because so much scrutiny now sits on every decision to drop a serious sexual offence case. Where one prosecutor’s conclusion that the evidence doesn’t meet the Full Code Test used to be the end of the matter, that same conclusion can now be examined again by a completely different lawyer working off the same file.
For a firm doing this properly, that changes the bar, not the outcome we’re working toward. An argument for discontinuance that’s built on a light read of the file was never strong enough for us in the first place, it now has to be strong enough to survive being read twice, by two lawyers who don’t know each other’s reasoning. That’s a reason to build the case for discontinuance earlier, more thoroughly, and with more evidence behind it. It is not a reason to assume the fight is any less winnable.
There’s a particular danger in historic allegations that people underestimate. The longer ago something is alleged to have happened, the less there usually is to test it against. Records get destroyed on ordinary retention schedules. Memories shift, not through dishonesty, just through time. Witnesses move abroad, lose touch, or die. CCTV that might once have settled the question in an afternoon, simply doesn’t exist anymore.
Put that alongside a system under pressure to charge, and you get exactly the conditions where an innocent person is most exposed: weak evidence, high political incentive to proceed anyway. That’s not a coincidence worth ignoring. It’s the reason every gap and every inconsistency in a historic case needs to be put in writing, in front of the right person, before a charging decision is made, and pursued again if it isn’t.
People fixate on prison, understandably. However, an allegation like this starts costing you long before any court gets involved.
For professionals, suspension from work, sometimes within days of an allegation surfacing, before a single charge exists. A regulator, the GMC, the NMC, the HCPC, the SRA, opening its own investigation in parallel, running on its own timetable regardless of what the criminal case does. Restricted contact with your own children. Your name attached to something, in whatever form, the moment people around you find out, long before anyone has tested a shred of evidence.
There’s the part that doesn’t show up on a case file at all: what it does to someone to sit in that limbo for months, not knowing, with the sense that their future is entirely in someone else’s hands.
It doesn’t have to be. Doing nothing is a choice, not a default, and it’s rarely the right one. We encourage you to be proactive in your defence instead of “hoping” that they get it right. It is not worth the risk, especially in the current climate and political pressures. There is always a way to be proactive in your defence, pre charge and post charge. Work to either prevent criminal charges, or reverse criminal charges to avoid going to trial.
If you’re under investigation for rape, sexual assault, or a historic sexual offence, or you’ve already been charged and told there’s nothing left to do but wait for trial, that is exactly the point to act, not the point to sit still.
At Lex Vindico Group, we go looking for what’s missing in a case before the CPS has finished deciding what it thinks the case is. Serious allegations. Serious consequences. Strategic defence.
Get in touch for a confidential consultation.
It’s a scheme, rolled out nationally from July 2026 after being tested in a smaller number of areas, that applies specifically to rape and serious sexual offence cases. Before a prosecutor formally discontinues such a case by offering no evidence, the complainant is told in advance and can ask for a second, independent prosecutor to review that decision before it becomes final. If the second reviewer takes a different view, the case can continue rather than end.
Not in terms of the underlying test, the Full Code Test hasn’t changed, and a case that genuinely doesn’t meet it, is still a case that should be discontinued. What’s changed is that the decision to discontinue can now be checked by a second, independent prosecutor before it’s finalised. That means the argument for discontinuance has to be strong enough to survive being read by two different lawyers rather than one, which is a reason to build that argument earlier and more thoroughly, not a reason to assume the outcome is less achievable.
Yes. A charging decision isn’t the end of the CPS’s obligation to test its own case. The Full Code Test namely, a) is there a realistic prospect of conviction, and b) is prosecution in the public interest, continues to apply throughout a case, right up to trial. Where fresh representations, disclosure, or analysis show the test is no longer met, the CPS can and does discontinue cases post-charge, including by offering “no evidence” in court.
It’s the two-stage test every CPS prosecutor must apply before charging, and must keep applying afterwards as review is an ongoing process. First, the evidential stage: is there enough evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction. Second, the public interest stage: even where the evidence is sufficient, is prosecution actually in the public interest. Both stages have to be satisfied for a prosecution to continue, at every point in the case, not only at the moment of charge.
Yes, and this is the period where the most can typically be achieved. Pre-charge representation involves demanding disclosure, challenging the evidential basis of the investigation, making early representations to the CPS on the Full Code Test, and providing material that can change the direction of a case before a charging decision is made. Waiting for a charging decision without taking any of these steps gives up the period when intervention is most effective.
The scheme is built around notifying and involving the complainant before a discontinuance decision is finalised, that’s its core purpose. It doesn’t create an equivalent formal notification right for a defendant regarding a complainant’s review request, which is exactly why a defence team’s own post-charge representations need to be robust enough to withstand additional scrutiny without relying on visibility into that separate process.
Lex Vindico Group is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We represent individuals and businesses nationally across England and Wales in criminal, regulatory, and parallel-proceedings defence at every stage, and most decisively, at the pre-charge stage.
This article is written by Akram Mula, LLM, Solicitor Advocate and CPS-approved Prosecutor, founder of Lex Vindico Group. It is general legal information about the CPS approach to charging rape and sexual offences, not legal advice on any specific case. For advice on your individual circumstances, contact our team directly.
.svg)
We’re proud to be recognised by the UK’s leading legal and professional bodies. With decades of experience across criminal defence, regulatory law, and litigation, our clients trust our lawyers to deliver results with discretion, precision, and integrity.
Your next step could make all the difference. Speak to our expert legal team now and protect your future.