'Will this ever end?' Abuse survivors on how the long wait for justice prolonged their anguish

It took more than 40 years before Alison Ruby felt able to tell police about the man who had peeled off her school tights and stolen her childhood. She told detectives that, from the age of 12, an antiques dealer named Richard Craig had regularly enticed her into his home during the school day to rape her in his bed.

- Emily Dugan

When she walked into Aylesbury police station in 2019, she never imagined that court delays would mean she was forced to wait a further five years for a trial - or that Craig would not live long enough to make it into the dock.

Ruby had been introduced to Craig by his younger brother, Tony Craig, a sports car salesman who lived next door to a schoolfriend, Justine Clareboets, in the village of Stone, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

Tony Craig groomed the girls from the age of nine and 10, luring them over his fence with exotic pets and money for the local shop.

As time went on, he took them to his brother's house in Aylesbury, where the brothers abused them while watching pornography.

"They made us feel like it was normal," Ruby said, waiving her right to anonymity to speak out about the justice system.

She added: "Obviously we were groomed. The pair of them were very clever." On 1 November this year, Tony Craig, by then 74, was jailed for 21 years for the rape and sexual abuse of Ruby and her schoolfriend when they were children in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Richard Craig should have stood trial alongside his brother, but he did not live long enough.

Sentencing Tony Craig, Judge Sheridan said he also faced culpability for introducing his victims to his brother. Though the brother himself never stood trial, the judge's remarks made clear that the women's testimony about Richard Craig had been believed.

Ruby said: "I used to skive off school, go around his [Richard Craig's] house, and he'd lay me on his bed, take my tights and knickers off and have sex with me. And I'd just lay there." At first, justice seemed to move relatively quickly. Richard Craig was charged jointly with his brother in 2020 for a catalogue of sexual crimes.