A girl who was allegedly raped when she was 13 years old is facing a three-year wait for justice due to massive backlog in the courts.

She says she was attacked during the lockdown summer of 2020, and the family initially were told the trial would start June 2022.

But just two days before the start date, they were told they’d have to wait another nine months for a judge to be available.

In the meantime the girl, now 15, is so traumatised that she’s been pulled out of school and struggles to leave the house.

Despite this, her alleged rapist was allowed to work in a shop just 10 metres away from the girl’s home, the family discovered just before Christmas.

Her dad claimed the police and CPS ‘didn’t seem interested’ and told him there was nothing they could do as bail conditions said nothing about staying a certain distance away.

But the family contacted the chain’s head office to complain and the defendant stopped working at the shop.

The girl’s dad told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme how ‘words cannot express’ the impact legal delays have had on his daughter.

He said: ‘I’m amazed, as her father, how strong she’s been. She wanted to go to court. She wanted the process.

‘The effect that it’s had on her now is like us all really. We’re just flattened. I feel flattened as a father. When you’re a father in this situation it’s very difficult.

‘My daughter doesn’t want cuddles, not even from her mother. At random times at night when she’s crying, we go in or mum goes in and speaks with her, and you just get through another day.’

He told how for the past two years, the girl, whose identity has been kept anonymous, has been home-schooled and ‘doesn’t want to go out’ anywhere.

Describing how the ordeal ‘blew us apart’ and left the family ‘flattened’, the dad said: ‘It’s just been a complete nightmare. There’s a whole litany of stuff we just cannot believe.’

He claimed that social services onyl visited his daughter on one occasion and that they ‘never saw hide nor hair of them again’.

Backlogs caused by the Covid pandemic and funding cuts to the legal system are likely to be made much worse by an impending barristers strike.

The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) will carry out indefinite strike action from Monday in protest over the Government’s proposals on criminal legal aid.

Since June members have been stopping work on alternate weeks, after rejecting an offer of a 15% pay rise.

There has been anger over the pay hike not being made effectively immediately, and only applying to new cases and not those sitting in the backlog.

The CBA said this means the new rate would only properly take effect from late 2023 or potentially 2024.

It called for a 25% increase to legal aid fees in order to prevent a mass exodus of people from the profession.

According to the CBA, incomes have fallen by nearly 30% over the past two decades.

It says that in their first three years of practice, specialist criminal barristers make a median annual income of £12,200 after expenses.

This, the association says, has driven 22% of junior criminal barristers to drop out since 2016.

CBA vice-chair, Kirsty Brimelow QC, described the strike as ‘last-resort action’ over a demand for less money than it costs the government for the courts to sit empty.

So far the Government has not negotiated with the association, with Justice Secretary Dominic Raab accusing striking barristers of ‘harming victims’ and ‘holding justice to ransom’.

Last night a source close to Mr Raab said he’d been made aware of the 13-year-old girl’s case and was ‘appalled’ the family has had to wait so long.

They told the Sun: ‘We were making progress getting the number of outstanding cases down but tragically we’re now going to see more cases like this as the barristers’ full strike kicks in.’

Today ministers are set to provide extra money for female offenders whose crimes were fuelled by addiction or domestic violence related problems.

A further £24million will be given to help stop re-offending and for local services work more closely.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘Restoring the swift access to justice victims deserve is our absolute priority and we are spending almost half a billion pounds to reduce wait times, as well as boosting funding for victim support to £460 million over the next three years.

‘Our actions had already brought the pandemic-induced backlog down by around 2,000 cases but the barristers’ strike action is undermining those efforts and will only see more victims face further delays.’

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