Last year I spoke to a young woman who urgently wanted to share her story, saying: “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.”

Sarah* detailed her appalling experience of Australia’s legal and justice system. She disclosed the impact of repeated and distressing delays in court appearances, often at the last minute – which had serious impacts on her mental health and ultimately led to her quitting the job she loved. She told me the prosecuting lawyer had changed multiple times, and often she discovered this only when she turned up to court and was met by a different person.

Sarah shared her distress at how, like all sexual violence victims, she had no one in court representing her – our system viewed her merely as a “witness” to her rape. I was shocked when she told me that she is afraid to leave her home alone – not because she is afraid of being raped but because she doesn’t ever want to go through the traumatic experience of navigating our legal system again.

I have heard similar experiences from women across the country.

© The Guardian