What do we mean when we use the word 'justice'? I've looked it up and the Oxford English Dictionary offers two principal meanings: the first being 'just and reasonable behaviour or the quality of being fair', and the second meaning is 'the administration of the law'. Now, as anyone who has known someone who's been raped or who has campaigned to improve the system will know, these two meanings are not always the same; the administration of the law in England is not providing survivors of rape with just and reasonable treatment in too many cases. The statistics do show this in part. In the year ending March 2019, as we've heard, less than 4 per cent of cases reported to the police resulted in a prosecution. But Llywydd, the statistics only tell us part of the story. What about the survivors who don't even feel able to report what's happened to them? The statistics are blighted by the stories they don't tell—the women and men who don't report what's happened to them out of stigma, shame, terror at how they might be blamed or not believed by the people and systems that are meant to provide them with just treatment.

And what of the survivors who do take that seemingly impossibly brave step to report a rape to the police? At every stage of a survivor's uphill struggle to get justice, the odds are stacked against them. Police culture—though improved and though there is positive work being undertaken by the police and crime commissioners, it's still patchy. There'll be questions about what the survivor was wearing, how much they'd had to drink, whether they'd slept with the perpetrator before, how many people they've slept with in general at any time, whether they've been in contact with the perpetrator since. There will be invasive medical examinations that may or may not get the evidence that they need to prove what's happened to them. And then, even if the police are satisfied with the veracity of their story and even if they went to report it before showering or doing the instinctive thing of washing what's happened away, they may still—they are overwhelmingly likely to be told that the Crown Prosecution Service doesn't think there's enough chance of success and that they won't be pursuing the case.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition cites a case dropped by the CPS because WhatsApp messages could be misinterpreted and another where rape within marriage wasn't prosecuted because of a CPS assumption that a jury wouldn't understand the dynamics of a coercive and controlling relationship. But Llywydd, is it any wonder that so few women and men choose to report when they've been raped? Our justice system requires phenomenal bravery from survivors; it requires them to put aside the trauma and to go to a cold examination room and talk to strangers about the worst thing that's ever happened to them. One of the main reasons I believe that justice should be devolved to Wales is that criminal cases like this don't happen in a vacuum. A survivor of rape will likely come into contact with a plethora of services—a GP, a triage nurse in A&E, a sexual health clinic, a support group, a Citizens Advice centre—before or instead of going to the police.