Sometimes when Daria Aspen looks back at her nine-year-old self – the age she was when her stepfather began to sexually abuse her – she pictures the scene from The Matrix when Keanu Reeves’s mouth seals up and disappears.

Her stepfather had warned her that if she told anyone what was happening, her mother would kill herself. He promised her he would never go to jail – and she believed him. Ashamed and frightened, she thought her silence was buying her family’s safety. “Looking back, there were many things I could have done to get out of the situation, but I just felt I couldn’t,” says Aspen. “I felt physically incapable of speaking it. It was stuck behind my teeth.”

Years later, aged 26, Aspen was finally ready to walk into Limehouse police station in east London and say that her stepfather, Wojtek Marian Nowicki, had raped her when she was nine, and continued to do this for five years. By then, Aspen hadn’t seen or heard from him for almost a decade, but she still had recurring nightmares, as well as panic attacks when she saw someone who looked even vaguely like him. She had much to lose by reporting him. Many possible outcomes were also her worse imaginable fears – the fear of not being believed, of facing him in court, of bringing him back into her life. “Reporting him was the most terrifying thought in the world,” she says, “but I finally decided that the chance that he was out there potentially doing it to others was worse than anything I risked by coming forward.”

She was not prepared for what followed. Recently, there has been some focus on court delays, and the fact that sex offence cases are taking longer to reach trial than ever before. In one harrowing BBC interview, a father described the impact of a possible three-year court delay on his daughter, who was raped at the age of 13. For Aspen, though, the wait was even longer. For five years, her case passed back and forth between the police and the CPS with not even a charging decision. Her allegations could hardly be more serious, yet they languished, Aspen’s life in limbo and her stepfather at liberty. “I thought the investigation would take a year, maybe two max. I had so little understanding of what I was walking into,” says Aspen, 31, who works as a user experience researcher for a tech company. Although she has a right to anonymity as a survivor of a sexual offence, she is waiving it because she is determined to make others understand how the system is failing, and how urgently it needs to be fixed.

Aspen’s stepfather came into her life when she was around three. Her mother was travelling from Poland in search of a new life and met Nowicki on the coach. For a young single mother who had had her daughter at 19, Nowicki, who was 20 years older, offered stability and protection. Aspen remembers strongly disliking him from the start – she cried hard on the morning he married her mother. “He was always shouting at me or telling me off and I was afraid of him. I instinctively distrusted him.”

When she was around seven, his behaviour towards her changed – she got more cuddles, she was asked to sit on his lap. When she was nine, Aspen remembers him putting her to bed and telling her he had fallen in love with her – “but not like a daughter”. Shortly after this, the sexual abuse began in the evenings, when her mother was at the library; she had a full-time job but was also studying for a degree.

Aspen can’t remember any joy in her life after that. “My life was so cut down by him,” she says. “He was such a controlling person, a suffocating force in the house. I wasn’t allowed friends round, I couldn’t stay at people’s houses. Part of his manipulation tactic was to make out that all the danger was external and we had to be protected from so many things. He always made my mum call him before she left the library in the evenings so he could wait at the door for her. Obviously, he didn’t want to get caught in the act.”

The sexual abuse stopped when Aspen was in her early teens. She believes that he was seeing her develop close friendships and recognising the risk that she might confide in someone. One morning, when Aspen was 17, she sat down with her mother at breakfast – her stepfather still in bed – and told her everything. “It was the point where I was able to see things a little more clearly. My mum wailed so loud, he must have heard,” says Aspen. Her mother wrote a note that said: “I know everything. Get your stuff and get out”, and Aspen and her mother left the house, staying out all day. By the time they returned, Aspen’s stepfather had gone, leaving only a suicide note, which he didn’t act on. They never saw or heard from him again.

By the time Aspen walked into the police station to report him, she felt more settled. She had had a little therapy – the 10 sessions available on the NHS – and was studying for a master’s at the Royal College of Art. In January 2017, she gave her first video interview with a specialist unit, which lasted about four hours. All the officers seemed patient and kind; they listened well. Her stepfather was arrested and his hard drive seized – according to police, he had more than 1m indecent images of children in his possession – then he was out on bail and the wait began.

“I agreed to only receive updates when there was a development,” says Aspen. “It made sense to keep disruption to a minimum. A trial could be on the horizon, so the whole time I was managing my wellbeing in anticipation of that.” But she had not realised how few developments there would be. Six months passed with only silence. She had no paperwork – not a single email or letter or official document – to show that anything was even on the system. “One of the hardest parts was having no understanding of where you are or what comes next. You feel like you’re in a black box with no idea what’s going on.”

For five years, the only developments Aspen was aware of were “further requests” from the police or the CPS. They wanted her medical records. “That meant everything – things like therapy notes,” says Aspen. “You sort of feel like you don’t have a choice.” (Groups such as Rape Crisis are campaigning to have therapy notes excluded from criminal trials, as they are in Australia.) Then came a request for her phone. “My whole life was on my phone; it was my most private possession, like it is for any young adult,” she says. “It has all your photos, all your messages, it’s like being asked to give your diary to someone. That was traumatising. It felt really invasive.” It also seemed unjustified. “I was nine when this happened,” she says. “I didn’t have a phone. Even in my teens, the phone I had was a different number.” At first, she refused; many months would pass then she would be asked again. That happened four times. Eventually, they reached a compromise where Aspen agreed to go to a police station and wait while someone scrolled through it.

On top of this were the numerous “clarifications” needed, with Aspen being called back to the police station to give more detail about things that were, she says, “blatantly obvious to my eyes”. This could be around the naming of body parts (“penis” and “vulva” were two examples) or specific sex acts. Another time, she was asked to supply more detail about the sexual abuse that had happened during holidays – even though the police had said that they would be focusing only on events in the UK. “That question came towards the very end – when they had had the case for almost five years,” she says. “By then, it really felt like the CPS were being deliberately obstructive. There should be a limit to the number of times you can ask for more unless there’s new information.” Further delay was caused by a long wait at the police lab for the enormous volume of her stepfather’s digital images to be viewed, assessed and graded. (This year, Channel 4 News found that police forces have more than 20,000 digital devices waiting to be examined.)

Life moved forward. Aspen’s reporting police officer changed three times, and each time Aspen had to rebuild the relationship and establish trust. One of her signed interviews was lost, so she was called in to do it again. Meanwhile, she finished her master’s, built a career, met her partner, planned a wedding and thought about starting a family. “Every decision I made was with this hanging over me,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine getting married or having a baby if it coincided with a court case. I had to tell three different employers. I was so envious of my friends who could just live their lives.”

She is also aware of the pressure such a wait must have on defendants. “I know my stepfather was guilty, so having this hanging over him was a small price to pay,” she says. “But if he was innocent, that wait would have been unacceptable. It fails everyone. I never once got any recognition that this was a horrifically long wait. They only pushed forward after I campaigned on my own behalf.”

At the end of 2021, Aspen contacted the Centre for Women’s Justice, which took on her case, and she also contacted the London mayor’s victims’ commissioner, Claire Waxman, who personally raised it with the CPS. Aspen also gave an anonymous interview to the Guardian. Shortly afterwards, on 22 March this year, Nowicki was charged with 12 sexual offences against Aspen, including four of rape. Three months later, he was also charged with possession of indecent images of children. Although Aspen had warned police that he was a suicide risk, and her police officer had warned the judge, he was not held on remand. He killed himself on 27 July. Aspen was travelling to Poland with her fiance for her wedding when she learned the news.

For Aspen, it was the worst possible outcome. “He’d always promised he’d never go to jail for what he did,” she says. “With each passing year, his words rang louder and it turned out to be true. I might not be mourning the loss of his life, but the fact is it’s another thing on your conscience. I’m firm that the blame doesn’t sit with me, but with the institutions that failed me – and failed him, too.” She’s choosing to go public with her experience because she wants change: far more support and information for survivors and investigations completed in a reasonable time frame.

Although the CPS declined an interview for this article, it did issue a statement: “Although this was a very serious and complex case, the delays before charge were clearly unacceptable. We are now working jointly with police to improve every aspect of how rape prosecutions are managed to help avoid such delay. This means building a strong case from the outset which can pass swiftly and efficiently through the system. We have a joint ambition to make sure our service is consistent and compassionate for all.” The Metropolitan police also acknowledged that “there is clearly learning to be had from this case” and pointed to its recent £11m investment in digital forensic capability, as well as an increase of resources and funding into its rape and serious sexual offence investigation teams.

Although Aspen is determined to campaign for improvements, she doesn’t regret her decision to report her stepfather. “It was the right thing, and it’s still worth doing,” she says. “I couldn’t not prosecute. I’d never have lived with myself if he’d continued to hurt someone else. You have to try and go through the process.” It has also brought her one other ray of light: she has found her voice again. “For years, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t speak it,” she says. “That’s why I’m now taking any chance I can to say what happened. He wanted it to stay silent and for years it did. Letting it out feels a kind of victory.”