Ciara Charteris: 'One friend raped me – then another betrayed me'

Sitting at the kitchen table in her parent's south London townhouse, Poldark star Ciara Charteris is taking stock of a whirlwind few days.

It was here at this very table a couple of weeks ago that the 25-year-old, along with her mum, dad, brother and boyfriend, the Scottish actor Nick Nunn, sat waiting for her blog post to go live on the I Am Arla charity website.

The open letter detailed the harrowing experience of being raped by a friend - someone Charteris had known since she was a teenager - after a night out in 2015. The devastating impact on her mental health resulted in her quitting acting. And there was further pain, when the female friend in whom she had confided, rekindled her friendship with the perpetrator. That prompted Charteris to go to the police, but the case was dropped.

She connected with I Am Arla on Instagram after spotting that they offered a place for women to tell their stories. They warned her that she might get a few messages following her blog.

What Charteris hadn’t expected was for it to make headlines in almost every major newspaper. Within hours, her phone was pinging with alerts from family and friends. She was invited to appear on radio shows, podcasts and television. She went to bed early, to sleep on it all, and woke to another flurry of messages from well-wishers and others sharing their own experiences of rape - including friends in the industry.

“It was all a bit overwhelming,” Charteris admits, shaking her golden plaits. “I had been advised by friends not to post anything. But this whole experience had broken me so much and I had already decided to quit acting - I didn’t have anything to lose in that respect.

“It was my way of taking back control of my life after my perpetrator wasn’t charged. It was an emotional outlet to get everything out and hopefully help other people.”

She also had a promise to keep. “The policewoman who told me that they couldn’t take the case any further, made me promise this wouldn’t be the end of my story. She said they needed people like me to speak out about my experience and help be a force for change. So this was for her, too.”

To see Charteris skipping through the Cornish fields as Emma Tregirls in Poldark, you would think she didn’t have a care in the world. “Poldark was a joyful time and I made lifelong friends. I’m so glad my career ended with such an amazing experience,” she says.

But when the cameras stopped rolling, she had to face her demons.“I look at my Instagram around that time and it was all so sparkly. But that wasn’t the truth. I wasn’t well.”

She landed a coveted role in film Mary Shelley opposite Elle Fanning and tried to audition for other parts, but panic attacks would stop her from getting through the door. After once thinking she had spotted her rapist in the street, the physical reaction was so strong that she vomited.

By the time Charteris appeared on the cover of a magazine to promote Poldark, she hadn’t been able to get out of bed for five days. “I felt like screaming ‘I’m not OK…this isn’t real’,” she recalls.

It was when she discovered, via social media, that her confidante - the first person she had turned to hours after the attack - had reignited her friendship with her perpetrator in 2018, that Charteris’s life imploded.

“It was like I had put the rape in a box and buried it so far down I didn’t have to think about it. Then when they became friends again and she cut me out of her life, it was like she had taken a great big mallet to it,” she says.

After four years of gentle persuasion by her parents, whom she had told a week after the rape happened, Charteris finally agreed to counselling.

“It was liberating,” she explains. “For years I suffered shame and loneliness, and blamed myself for not fighting him off. I despised the act of sex which made having a relationship hard.

“I discovered your fight or flight mode isn’t attuned to see your friend as a rapist. You don’t hit back like you would a stranger because it is too much for your brain to process.

“‘Acquaintance rape’ is so common and completely different to violent [stranger] rape, but they are dealt with by the police in the same way. That’s one change I’d like to see happen.”

One day last September, Charteris felt strong enough to walk into her local police station, with her mum by her side, and report the attack.

“You do know rape is only one below murder?” she was warned by an officer.

Having taken five years to build up the courage to even say the ‘R’ word, Charteris almost bolted. “Then I felt angry,” she says. “Why was I being told that? Are you going to tell him that? Because surely it should be the perpetrator who needs to understand the seriousness of their crime, not me. I know. I’m living it.”

The questioning was brutal. “I was on my own in the room and asked things like ‘where exactly did you put your hand at 11.29pm?’.”

She since found out her perpetrator wasn’t placed under the same scrutiny. “His process over mine was mind-blowing,” she says. “He was allowed to attend with a lawyer and just deliver a pre-written statement. If this is a crime that is almost as serious as murder, then why isn’t it treated as such?”

Despite being five years after the attack, Charteris was told she had a decent case - with text messages from the accused saying he “knew he had done something wrong.” But they needed evidence from her confidante, who declined to give it.

“That was so painful. Her silence was excruciating and what made it worse was she was tweeting #MeToo and supporting a movement that she personally could have helped,” she says.

In March this year, Charteris was told that her attacker wouldn’t be charged.

“It is so hard for a case to move on unless the perpetrator says ‘I raped her’. That needs to change,” she says.

In July, new figures showed that the number of individuals prosecuted and convicted for rape has fallen to the lowest level since records began. Police recorded 55,130 rapes in England and Wales in 2019-20, but there were only 2,102 prosecutions and 1,439 convictions - a mere 1.4 per cent. Victims’ commissioner Dame Vera Baird called it situation “utterly shameful” and the Crown Prosecution Service now faces a judicial review over how it prosecutes rape cases.

In light of this, is Charteris still glad she reported her attacker?

“Absolutely. And despite what I went through I would encourage anyone else to do the same - if and when they are ready. His name is on future records now at least.”

Unsurprisingly, she hasn’t heard from him since her story went public, but her confidante did get in touch.

“She sent a text saying ‘I am willing to see you, if that’s too much I will pay for your therapist to be there’. What does that even mean? No apology, no explanation. I didn’t reply.”

Charteris now feels like doors are starting to open in other areas of her life. Her next role is as a real life student of psychology and neuroscience.

By speaking out, she hopes to help others in her situation. “I felt years of shame and loneliness, so if I can relinquish either one of those feelings for anyone then that’s amazing.”

For any support or advice, visit iamarla.com or rapecrisis.org.uk