How we write about this

We use the word rape

We do not write “non-consensual sex”, “sexual misconduct”, or “intimate assault” when we mean rape. Euphemism softens an offence the law and the survivor name plainly. It mirrors the language of the defence bar, and it is its own harm. Where the word is accurate, we use it.

We do not use it metaphorically, as a synonym for any other kind of loss or violation, or as a headline grabber. The word appears only in its literal, evidential sense.

We frame around the perpetrator

Active voice on the offender, wherever the sentence permits. “A man raped her” rather than “she was raped.” Where we write about police-perpetrated cases, we name the convicted officer and what they did. This is not sensationalism. It is the opposite: it keeps responsibility where it belongs and refuses to make the victim the grammatical subject of their own harm.

Survivor and victim, not accuser

We use victim in legal and statistical contexts, and survivor in lived-experience contexts, following the person’s own framing where it is known. We do not use accuser or alleged victim: those are defence-coded, and they presume the complainant is the one whose account requires interrogation.

Content notices, not content warnings

Every page that discusses rape, sexual violence, child abuse or suicide in any volume carries a plain, factual note at the top: what the page covers, in one line. No modals. No alarmist language. The notice exists so readers can choose whether to continue, not to sanitise what follows.

Suicide: factual, signposted, never described

We follow the Samaritans Media Guidelines. We do not describe method. We do not romanticise. Where the subject arises - in inquest reporting, in case histories of police-perpetrated harm - we state the fact, link to Samaritans (116 123) and Rape Crisis, and move on. An automated editorial check flags any new use of the word for human review before it ships.

Mental health: described, not pathologised

We follow Mind’s media guidelines and the Time to Change language standard. We do not write that someone suffers from, battles, or is a victim of a mental health condition - they live with it, or simply have it. We do not use crazy, insane, psychotic, schizophrenic, bipolar or hysterical as adjectives for behaviour, decisions or institutions.

Where we write about PTSD and Complex PTSD - which we do, at length, because the evidence on wrongful prosecution requires it - we describe symptoms factually, attribute to clinical sources (ICD-11, PTSD UK, the UK Trauma Council), and frame trauma responses as adaptations to documented harm, not as pathology. A person who became hypervigilant after the institution that was meant to protect them harmed them is not broken. They are correctly calibrated to their experience.

Signposting: multi-channel, always

Every crisis signpost on this site offers at least one non-voice option. Not everyone in distress can speak aloud, and someone being monitored, controlled or coerced often cannot risk a phone call being overheard. The Silent Solution service (dial 999, then press 55), Shout (text SHOUT to 85258), Samaritans by email and Relay UK / SignHealth for Deaf and BSL users sit alongside phone numbers, not below them.

We do not bury signposting at the bottom of long pages. The footer carries the safety strip first, before navigation. Pages that discuss distressing material carry a plain content notice at the top and a jump-to-support link.

No victim-blaming, ever

We follow the March 2024 IOPC guidance on victim-blaming language, endorsed by the NPCC. We do not write that a complainant regretted what happened, was drinking, was flirting, led him on, provoked the offence, made it up, or cried rape. We do not describe what the survivor was wearing. We do not write false allegation as a category - the phrase appears on this site only when describing the documented tactic of an offender misidentifying their victim as the perpetrator, which is the offender's act, not the survivor's.

Where we quote a police statement, court transcript or inquiry finding that itself uses victim-blaming language, we quote it verbatim and mark it as a quotation, so the language under scrutiny is visible as the institution's own.

Gender: neutral by default, specific when the evidence is

Generic copy uses gender-neutral language - the survivor, the complainant, the officer, they. We use gendered language only where it carries evidential weight: named individuals (Sarah Everard, David Carrick, Clare Wood), sex-specific offence patterns documented in the data we cite (the VAWG framing used by HMICFRS, CPS and the Home Office), or named organisations (Centre for Women's Justice, Women's Aid). We do not default to she for victims or he for officers in generic prose - both choices smuggle in assumptions the evidence does not support uniformly.

Sexual orientation: name it when it is the reason

We follow Galop and IPSO guidance. We do not mention a person's sexual orientation unless it is directly relevant to the case being described. Where it is relevant - the Stephen Port investigation, where the Met's failure to link the deaths of four young gay men in Barking was itself shaped by homophobic indifference, as the 2021 inquest jury found - we name it plainly. Removing it would erase the structural point.

We use the terms people use for themselves. We do not write homosexual as a noun. We do not use lifestyle or preference. Where a case involved a same-sex relationship and that fact is incidental to the offence, we describe the relationship in neutral terms and let it sit there without comment.

Race and ethnicity: specific, sourced, never decorative

We do not use BAME or BME - the Race Disparity Unit deprecated both, and survivors and communities have repeatedly said they erase distinct experiences. Where the underlying statistical source uses ethnic minority as its category (HMICFRS workforce data, Home Office statistics), we cite it in those words and attribute the source. Where we can be specific - Black, South Asian, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities - we are.

We never invoke race as a descriptor of a victim or perpetrator unless it is directly relevant to the case being described and documented in the source. We do not use coloured, mixed race (we use mixed heritage or the person’s own term), or non-white as a category.

Trans and non-binary people

Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are non-binary. We follow the person’s own pronouns and the language they use about themselves. We do not write biological woman, biological man, trans-identified, preferred pronouns, or born a man/born a woman - each carries an implicit contest of the person’s identity. Cis and cisgender are used only where the distinction is the point of the sentence.

Where a victim’s trans status is part of the documented offence pattern - hate crime, denial of services, misidentification by police - we name it because the evidence requires it. Where it is incidental, we do not mention it.

Naming

We do not name living victims, survivors, or people acquitted of criminal charges. Where individuals are named, they are convicted offenders, named in published inquiry findings, deceased, or have actively chosen to identify themselves in their own published account.

Plain English, within reason

The subject matter is technical - statute, statistical methodology, named inspection frameworks - and we do not pretend it isn’t. We follow the Plain English Campaign’s working principles where they fit: short sentences, active voice, Anglo-Saxon over Latinate where the meaning is the same (use not utilise, to not in order to, about not with regard to, but not notwithstanding).

We do not simplify away precision. Statutory terms (course of conduct, reasonable belief, balance of probabilities), named legislation, the names of inspection regimes (PEEL, NCPI, Soteria), and statistical category labels stay as the source uses them. Substituting a folksier term in those places would misrepresent the evidence.

Acronyms: spell out on first use, every page

Police accountability runs on acronyms - HMICFRS, IOPC, NPCC, PEEL, NCPI, CPS, VAWG, DA, SPO, MARAC, DARVO, MG3, RASSO, VRR, FOI, PCC. We expand each on its first appearance on every page, because no reader should have to remember what they meant six pages ago. Where an acronym appears inside a verbatim quotation that does not expand it, we add the expansion in square brackets after the quote, not inside it.

Imagery

No stock photographs of distressed women as visual shorthand for sexual violence. No silhouettes. No images that aestheticise harm. Where the page needs a visual element, it is documentary - a policy diagram, a chart, a published photograph of a convicted officer in uniform.