What happens when someone calls the police with a rape allegation, but they are met with a series of mistakes from the moment officers arrive until the trial?
A Guernseywoman went viral on TikTok last year speaking about her experiences.
Daisy Chapple’s story shows what can go wrong when someone makes a report of rape to the police.
“I knew that I would be making a complaint when all of this was done, regardless of the verdict,” she said.
“I knew that this wasn’t right, so I kept a note every time something went wrong, and it’s so long. It’s so, so long.”
“There is still this idea that Guernsey is this idyllic, safe place where nothing bad happens.”
Daisy made a report of rape in October 2023. She knew immediately she’d give all the evidence she needed and would “100%” support a prosecution, she explained.
“I got raped and I phoned my mum, and I phoned the police right away. They arrived fairly quickly. But that’s about where the good points stopped.
“That was good, and then nothing good happened for the next year.”
Background
Daisy was well-informed. She was one of the founders of the Guernsey Women’s Collective, she had organised a vigil for Sarah Everard (who was killed by a police office in London in 2021) and she subsequently helped signpost survivors towards other organisations, including the police.
She described the collective as her “baby”, which many hours went into.
She had even been given a tour of the newly-built Sexual Assault Referral Centre at Willow House, which would open months later.
Daisy did everything by the book, calling Guernsey Police immediately after the event had happened, giving officers her bedsheets and clothes. She had to wait for hours to give evidence though.
“I knew straight away that if I press charges , the chances of him even being charged were really low,” she said.
“The police got there, I was on the floor crying and my mum and my stepdad were already there… it didn’t cross my mind that it wouldn’t go all the way.”
What happens when police arrive?
After police officers arrived at Daisy’s bedsit, there was confusion as to where she should have a medical exam – a forensic exam to capture important evidence for a possible trial.
It was suggested first that she be examined at her house. 45 minutes later, Daisy was told she would be taken to Willow House despite it not being open yet.
She was finally taken to Le Marais Centre.
The process took several hours, she said, in the middle of the night.
“I said to them: ‘I really need to eat something. I feel really ill.’
“It’s two or three o’clock in the morning, I feel really sick – I need to eat something because I haven’t eaten in five hours or something.
“They were like: ‘You can’t eat anything. You can’t drink anything. It could affect the results of the forensic exam.’
“Then I was saying I really need to use the bathroom – and again they said: ‘We can’t tell you not to use the bathroom, but we’d advise against it, because it could affect the results of the forensic exam.'”
“For there just to be so many mistakes one after the other, it just felt like nobody was listening.”
Only later did Daisy find out that the police officers should have had a first evidence kit in the car, which would have allowed her to eat and use the toilet while she waited to see a doctor.
The exam, she recounted, was “horrific, really scary and painful”, with just the male doctor and two police officers in the room.
Daisy was told later on that there should have been a crisis worker with her.
“I wish that my best friend had been able to come in with me,” she said.
“It turns out the crisis worker was there at the clinic, but she didn’t know that she was meant to be in the room with me, and the police didn’t know that she was meant to be in the room with me, and so it was just me and this doctor and these two police officers.
“Nobody’s speaking. It’s complete silence other than me crying, and the police were just taking the like swabs from the doctor and putting them in little evidence bags.”
The doctor then told her she should take a Plan B pill – but it turned out that those stored at the clinic were out of date, so he promised that the police would organise for some to be brought to her.
The next morning, Daisy went to give a video interview at Le Marais Centre.
While there she asked when she would get the emergency contraception but was told: “We don’t do that. We don’t know why he would have told you that.”
She bought her own emergency contraception for £9, which at the time, she said, was “a lot of money”. 18 hours passed between the alleged rape and her obtaining the pill, she said.
“Mistake after mistake after mistake”
Daisy recalled a series of issues in her communication with Guernsey Police and the courts over the course of the next few months.
When the man in the case was due to plead in court, the officer in charge of the case had promised he would give her a call immediately after the hearing.
“He promised, and then he didn’t phone, and I didn’t hear anything from him. I got a call the next morning from him, apologising and saying that I had just slipped his mind.
“I was like: ‘Are you ****ing joking? I slipped your mind?’
“So it was the smaller aspects of the complaint,” she said.
When Daisy’s mother went to give a statement to the police, the officer told her: “It’s such a shame that he raped [Daisy] because he really liked [her].”
When she called the sergeant, he told her that he understood he found it offensive but that he was “not quite there” himself.
Despite being upset, Daisy described wanting to be easy to work with, not escalating her complaints.
“I didn’t want to be a b****, because I wanted them to try as hard as they possibly could.
On other occasions, there was “miscommunication after miscommunication”, she said.
Daisy was given the wrong dates for the trial, officials forgot that she had asked for special measures in the court (victims can give evidence from behind screens or by videolink), and her mother and best friend weren’t told that they would be asked to give evidence.
“It was mistake after mistake after mistake,” she said.
“I think it was three or four months between the rape and him being charged, and I’m sat there for three or four months not even knowing if it’s going to go to court or not to court, not knowing if the forensic exam, if any of it means anything.
“Having no idea if there was any point to it, and having no idea if I’d done the right thing, or if anyone was going to believe me or take me seriously, and for there just to be so many mistakes one after the other, it just felt like nobody was listening.”
With the mistakes piling up, she said she was losing confidence that her case was being handled well: did officers believe her? Was less effort going into the investigation than she hoped?
“I had every right to be angry, and bad stuff kept happening and it wasn’t stopping.”
“Why would you say that to me? That doesn’t help me”
The Willow House Sexual Assault Referral Centre opened just a few months after Daisy’s experience – something that she kept being reminded of.
“People kept saying to me the night that it happened – the police officers kept saying to me when I got to the clinic: ‘the sexual assault referral center, Willow House is opening in January. It’s such a shame that this happened now. This was October. ‘It’s such a shame this has happened now, because Willow House is opening in January.’
“And at the time, I remember thinking, why would you say that to me? That doesn’t help me.”
The new facility has helped make processes smoother and give victims easier access to support, according to Guernsey Police.
But that didn’t, and doesn’t help Daisy overcome her trauma.
Daisy agreed that it is a helpful service now though.
“The people that work at Willow house are incredible. They do an incredible job, and I’m completely inspired by them.”
When it comes to the police, she has asked to make sure that other problems, like the lack of first evidence kits, are fixed too.
Police “should have done better”
After Daisy complained to Bailiwick Law Enforcement in September 2024, there was an acknowledgement that officers “should have done better” – but that those officers hadn’t breached their standards for behaviour.
Deputy Chief Officer Richard Bell said some of the comments made would serve as “a learning opportunity”. He apologised to her but didn’t pursue the complaint further.
In a further statement, Deputy Chief Bell said: “To report a rape to Guernsey Police is undoubtedly a very difficult and daunting step to take, and when an individual does come forward, they rightly expect to receive proper, professional support. In the majority of cases I am confident Guernsey Police provides this support and service, however, particularly in this complex area of policing, we have in the past, on occasion, fallen below the standards we should be held to – this case was one of those examples.
“This specific incident was reported in 2023. Since that time, Guernsey Police has made significant improvements to its processes around serious sexual assaults and the support it provides to victims. Across the partnership in Guernsey more generally there has been significant improvements, more specifically with the opening of Willow House, the Bailiwick’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre.
“Our letter to the complainant, dated 3rd January 2025, which we understand the media has possession of, outlines why in the circumstances of this complaint there was no conduct which amounted to misconduct or gross misconduct to answer to, however we acknowledged to the complainant that it was clear the service we provided fell below the standards we hold ourselves to.
“On that basis I would again like to apologise to the complainant for the service they received, and I hope they take some comfort in the fact that we have learnt from this case, we have made improvements, and we continue to work on improving our service and support for victims of crimes. ”
Daisy also wrote to deputies and heard back from a few – Yvonne Burford, she said, was helpful.
Support on TikTok
Now a Politics and Social Change student in Brighton specialising in gender studies, Daisy took to TikTok to talk about her experiences.
Some of those videos went viral shining an ever hotter spotlight on Guernsey Police.
“Women have a lot of built-in shame that doesn’t belong to us and shouldn’t belong to us. So every time I regret crying on the internet about something incredibly personal, I’m like: it’s not mine, it’s not my shame.”
Sometimes tearful, always bold, Daisy’s TikToks have inspired hundreds of followers to support her – with some coming from women waiting to give their own evidence, and sharing their similar experiences with the courts and the police locally and further afield.
As a result, people in Brighton – total strangers – have asked if they could give her a hug. And when she returned to Guernsey, she described regretting it “slightly”.
“I think that women have a lot of built-in shame that doesn’t belong to us and shouldn’t belong to us. So every time I regret crying on the internet about something incredibly personal, I’m like: it’s not mine, it’s not my shame.
“It’s not my shame to have, it’s his, it’s someone else’s, it’s the police, it’s his lawyers’.”
She cited Gisèle Pelicot, who made waves in France last year when dozens of men were convicted of raping her, as an inspiration – and she hopes that she can make the ordeal “mean something”.
“There is still this idea that Guernsey is this idyllic, safe place where nothing bad happens.
“And until that image is rectified and we come to terms with the fact that we are exactly the same as the UK, there is an epidemic of violence against women and girls, nothing is going to change, because we have to actively notice that it’s happening in order to put what needs to be in place, in place.
“And I think that the police are just as guilty of that as Home are of not recognizing the fact that this is happening and that this is a huge, huge issue.”