'I bumped into my rapist in Tesco - the law must change'
A rape victim is campaigning for bail laws to be changed after she bumped into her attacker - who was allowed to roam free for more than three years - in the supermarket.
Kayleigh Keasley, 24, was assaulted after a night out with friends in Milton Keynes in December 2019.
Her attacker Craig Burnikell was arrested a week after the incident but wasn't charged until February 2021, and was only jailed last month.
Ms Keasley, who has waved her right to anonymity to speak out, says the court process was "horrible and long-winded". She is now campaigning for reform after Burnikell was bailed.
Ms Keasley has launched a petition to tighten bail conditions on people charged with rape, saying: “What they are allowed to do after being charged and convicted is ridiculous. You wouldn’t let a murderer out on the street.
“He was still out on the streets and could easily do it to someone else in the meantime. By leaving it that long they’re giving him the chance to do it to other girls.
“Two weeks after the incident happened and I’d reported it to the police, I went to Tesco and saw him in the shop. I threw my trolley and ran out the shop and now I can’t go to the shop on my own."
Ms Keasley was attacked by Burnikell, now 26, as she slept in his house following a night out. She was supposed to return home but, after the pair shared a taxi, she realised her bag and phone had gone missing.
This left her unable to pay the taxi fare, with Burnikell offering her a place to sleep in a guest room at his home. A court heard she then woke during the night to find the predator raping her.
HGV driver Burnikell, from Milton Keynes, was arrested on 20 December, 2019 - a week after the attack - but wasn't charged until 18 February, 2021. A court date was set for 4 April, 2022, but this was adjourned after a day due to a juror being unwell.
The trial was then rescheduled and ended in a hung jury. A retrial took place in April this year, where her attacker was convicted of rape. However, he was not remanded and his bail continued until he was sentenced - to eight years in prison - on 13 June at Aylesbury Crown Court.
Ms Keasley, a national communications centre supervisor, said the wait for justice was debilitating.
She said: “It was horrible, I don’t think [prosecutors] realise: every single day I felt like I had a weight on my shoulders as it wasn’t over and not done.
“My main reason for going to the police was that I could not forgive myself if I found out he did it to someone else. All I wanted was to stop it from happening and they were giving him the chance to do it again."
Of her campaign to remove the right to bail for those charged with rape, she said: “I want the justice system to actually consider what kind of offence it was. I believe from day one I've just been known as a number, and I think they’ve just dealt with it as another case."
Rape: In numbers
According to the Rape Crisis charity, 67,169 rapes were recorded by police in England and Wales in 2022
By the end of the year, charges had been brought in just 1.9% (1,276) of those cases
Adult rape cases take an average of more than two years to complete in court. There are currently 2,210 waiting to go to crown courts: a record high
The charity says factors leading to these backlogs include poor working conditions for barristers and solicitors, leading to strikes; a shortage of judges; empty courtrooms; problems with how cases are scheduled; and a lack of pandemic planning pre-2020 lockdowns for the courts, meaning IT systems weren't in place. The charity says all these factors lead to more trials being delayed
Its recommendations to fix these problems include the fast-tracking of sexual offence cases; specialist sexual offence courts where all staff receive trauma-informed training; pilots of judge-only trials, with the charity saying jury trials are more costly and lengthy; a long-term recruitment strategy for recruiting and retaining criminal lawyers; and victims and survivors being recognised as participants in the court process, "rather than just witnesses to a crime"
