Diolch, Llywydd. We are all, I'm sure, aware of a number of high-profile cases recently that justify the need for this debate. One was particularly harrowing: the British teenager who was convicted of lying about being gang-raped and sentenced to a four-month suspended sentence and fined €140. This followed the retraction of her statement to police after an eight-hour unrecorded interrogation session without access to legal representation. The multiple injuries on her body were, according to one expert, said to be consistent with a violent assault. I and many others are of the view that an atrocity has been committed against this young women and that it is potentially a miscarriage of justice. In short, I believe her, and plenty of others do, too. And it's all very well for people to be pointing the finger at the flawed justice system in Cyprus. I would argue that there isn't a country in the world where it is safe for women to live without the fear of rape or sexual assault.

Let's just take a look at the statistics. In the year ending March 2019, there were 58,657 allegations of rape, yet there were only 1,925 convictions for rape. Since 2016, the number of cases prosecuted by the CPS has fallen by 52 per cent. This is despite the fact that there has been a 43 per cent increase in the number of rape allegations made to the police. Prosecutions for rape in England and Wales are at their lowest levels in a decade; and that is for adults. For children, we still do not know the full extent of childhood sexual abuse. Though, according to the Children's Society, analysis from the ONS found that children in England and Wales are over-represented in sexual offence numbers, with rape victims more likely to be aged between 15 and 19 years old, and account for nearly a quarter, that's 23 per cent, of all rape offences recorded by the police, even though that age group only makes up 6 per cent of the population. Around 85 per cent of those reported offences do not result in any action against the perpetrator.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. To address and tackle and turn around these shocking statistics, all arms of Government must take action and responsibility. A poisonous culture that results in victim blaming, the persecution of survivors and the presumption of innocence towards perpetrators has resulted in rape and sexual assault almost having become decriminalised. What is the point of reporting rape or sexual assault when you know the kind of treatment that you can expect? How many people have an appetite to relive the trauma whilst not being believed only to get no result at the end of it all? Why would you bother? So, I salute all of those people who report; you are incredibly brave. 

But I want to touch on the political context under which this is all happening. I don't believe that it is an accident that the former Secretary of State for Wales has not been held to account for what he did or didn't know about the actions of his friend and political colleague Ross England, who was responsible for collapsing a rape trial, forcing a rape survivor not only to have to relive her ordeal once but twice, and her name was trashed in the process. Most women I know—I have to say that most women I know and who I've spoken to about this have some unwanted sexual experience in their history. This stuff is all too common. Most women I know have been horrified that a man who collapsed a rape trial can be promoted politically after he did that, while the survivor's care has been neglected—