THE vast majority of rape victims who do not report the incidents to police fail to do so because they do not trust that they could obtain justice, results of a new survey suggests.

Fewer than one in seven alleged victims feel confident they can obtain justice by making a police report, according to the poll carried out by the government’s Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird.

According to the self-selecting survey of 491 rape survivors, carried out over a six-week period in the summer, more than a quarter (29 per cent) of survivors did not make a police report and, of them, 95 per cent said fears about not being believed were the main reason for that decision.