‘After I was sexually assaulted, the police let me down every step of the way’

On a Saturday night in January 2018, Nadia Valeri was in east London celebrating with a friend who was getting married when she lost an hour of her life. She remembers ordering a rum old fashioned at a ping pong venue. She played some ping pong with the groom and his friends. Then everything went blank.

“I was completely unconscious,” says Valeri. “There’s about an hour of my life that no one can account for. Whatever I was spiked with was so strong that I didn’t feel like I was there. It was like I was looking in on myself.”

When Valeri, 37, regained consciousness, she was slumped over a table at the front of the bar. She later discovered bruising on her inner thighs and had pain in her groin, which travelled up her spine.

“I still don’t know [what happened],” she breaks off.

When we meet at the office for Valeri’s solicitors, Hodge Jones & Allen (HJA), she speaks carefully, trying to hold back the anger and devastation that has become her life in the last three years. She has decided to waive her anonymity as a survivor of sexual assault to share her story and highlight the the Met Police’s failure to investigate her case. In the wake of Sarah Everard’s death, it has felt more pressing than ever.

“It’s fair to say you were disbelieved and gaslighted for a year by the police,” says Sebastian Del Monte, Valeri’s lawyer, who joins her for support, along with a friend.

She replies: “I want to expose that.”

Valeri’s case might sound like a lesson in how not to investigate cases of sexual assault – but her experience is all too common. Ministers have this week apologised unreservedly to rape victims. Robert Buckland MP, the lord chancellor, said he was “deeply sorry” survivors had been failed “as a result of systemic failings after years of austerity”.

“We will not rest until real improvements are made – from transforming the support given to victims, to ensuring cases are investigated fully and prosecuted robustly,” said Buckland.

Rape convictions are at an all-time low despite an increase in the number of incidents being reported. Such experiences have recently been reflected on screen in Promising Young Woman, which won an Oscar for best original screenplay, and I May Destroy You.

“It happens all the time,” says Del Monte. “The treatment of victims in this way is very typical.”

The day after she was assaulted, Valeri called the police. Even now, she is incredulous as she explains the first thing the male officer said to her: that they always see a spike in “these kinds of crimes” at this time of year.

“They didn’t ask me what I thought had happened, didn’t tell me to go and get tested,” she says. “There was nothing.”

The investigation went from bad to worse. Without a referral by the police for forensic tests, Valeri arranged to see her GP for a urine sample. They sent her to the hospital for a blood test for drug abuse, which doesn’t identify all the chemicals in spiking drugs.

“Police later relied on the hospital report for misuse of drugs which doesn’t test for all the drugs that women are spiked with,” says Del Monte.

The following day, on Tuesday, Valeri called the police again and they sent two female officers to her house, who spent seven hours questioning her, taking swabs and urine samples, and retrieving the clothes she was wearing on the night.

“It was very distressing,” she recalls.

While there, they allocated a female officer trained in Sexual Offences Investigative Techniques (SOIT) to Valeri. “She was supposed to come to my home, but instead she got on the phone,” says Valeri. “The first thing she asked me was, what was I wearing? I’d been out drinking, was I prepared to have my phone taken from me? Am I prepared to go up against a jury to prove this happened to me?”

Valeri had a panic attack and felt like she couldn’t breathe. When she regained her composure, she said to the officers in her home: “I don’t think victim shaming and blaming is the first thing I want to hear, considering how many days it is after the fact.”

Reflecting now, she says, “It's sickening to hear that from the Met Police, from a department that's set up specifically for victims of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.”

Valeri arranged to go to The Havens, a sexual assault referral centre, without a police escort after an officer cancelled on her at 11pm. She had five hours of invasive tests but the police never sent the samples off for a toxicology report.

“Everything I went through at The Havens, all of those swabs, having my clothes taken, giving blood and urine samples, all of that was for nothing, because they didn't put it through,” says Valeri.

Added to that, the police initially told Valeri the venue had good CCTV footage of her – but they failed to obtain it. When they attended the bar, on multiple occasions, they were told the manager who could access the footage wasn’t available and they would have to come back. Eventually, the police left a memory stick at the bar and asked the manager to load it with the footage.

“[The venue said], when they tried to download it, it happened to delete two weeks’ worth of footage from that period,” says Del Monte. “The police couldn’t determine how it was deleted.”

“In that moment, I realised I don’t think I’ll ever know what happened to me,” says Valeri. “There was a lot of profanity, but I didn't care because he had delivered it like he had no care in the world. He didn't seem to understand the gravity and impact of it.”

Valeri believes the police never wanted to pursue her investigation. “They were trying to get me to drop the entire thing,” she says.

At one point, in an interview months after the attack, an officer suggested Valeri might have injured herself in a previous venue when walking up some stairs.

“They spent nine months looking at footage not relevant to the incident itself but of Nadia,” says Del Monte. “There was a lot of focus on Nadia and undermining the case rather than building it, which is typical in my experience.”

Rape convictions fell to a five-year low last year, with just 1,439 convictions out of the 55,130 incidents that were reported. The drop, says Del Monte, came after the police were embarrassed by a number of cases collapsing after phone evidence was provided.

“It's always so difficult for women to come forward and the criminal justice system is hugely traumatic,” says Del Monte. “No one's saying policing sexual violence is an easy thing, but you have to be brave and you have to case build. You have to support victims and be proactive and they weren't. That's typical in my experience. There’s an institutional reticence to pursue these cases.”

Valeri doesn’t have any recourse for discovering what happened to her.

“Due to the police failings and a lack of any proactive investigating, Nadia will never know who assaulted her,” says Del Monte. “The individuals who had access to her drink prior to her assault were neither identified nor interviewed.”

Valeri pushed the Met for over a year to find out what happened to her, but on February 14 2019 they announced they weren’t taking further action. Valeri made contact with HJA, via the Centre for Women’s Justice, and decided to bring a case.

“I realised I needed to fight for my justice,” she says. “I had been completely let down by the Met Police every step of the way.”

In September 2020, the Met settled a civil claim with Valeri out of court and paid her £35,000 in compensation. The Met didn’t admit liability and rejected requests for a letter of apology, but it did say it would learn from Valeri’s case and use it for training.

“I didn’t really feel like I’d won anything,” she says.

Victims who suffer injury as a result of crime can normally go to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority [CICA]. “But because of the failures of the police it’s proving hard for Nadia to even show the CICA that she’s a victim of a crime,” says Del Monte. “So unfortunately there are difficulties in her getting any further compensation, which obviously isn’t right.”

Valeri was vivacious before her attack. A freelance creative producer and events manager, she loved dancing and helped run Notting Hill Carnival. But the assault left her with nerve damage to her spine and post-traumatic stress disorder. For two years, she required crutches to walk and she will need ongoing root nerve injections. She is still receiving treatment for her mental and physical health problems.

“I’m reminded of it every day,” says Valeri. “It has completely changed my life. I’ve had breakdowns. I wondered if I would be able to walk again. I haven’t used public transport since, I take taxis everywhere. Being physically assaulted like that and not getting any justice has destroyed the person I was.”

Valeri’s voice breaks as she adds, “And it’s destroyed my marriage.”

Tears roll down her cheeks and she asks if we can take a break.

Later, she adds, “For the last few years I have actively protected everyone, my family, certain friends, my husband, because they couldn’t cope with this.”

The consequences have been far reaching. She separated with her husband of nine years in January and moved out of their family home. Before that, she had to remortgage her house to pay for medical bills.

“I was at the height of my career in terms of earnings [when it happened],” she says. “Now I have massively reduced hours and a lower day rate.”

At the last Notting Hill Carnival, in 2019, Valeri hired private security because she didn’t feel comfortable being in the crowd alone. “That’s my passion, my joy, my culture,” she says. “It’s massively painful that I’m not able to participate.”

Would she go to the police again? “Absolutely not,” she says. “I wouldn’t put myself through that ever again and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else either.”

Going forward, Valeri believes the police should train more female officers as SOIT. She also wants their starting point to be one of supporting victims and building a case – rather than trying to undermine it from the off.

Valeri is piecing her life back together. “It’s still very raw,” she says. “But there’s one thing in my personality that hasn’t changed: you’re not going to shut me up. I can only hope this will have some impact.”