Would you advise a loved one to report a sexual assault? It’s a question that exposes a failing justice system

‘Why are rape myths – those unkillable zombie tropes we have been discussing ad nauseam for years – still being weaponised in courts of law?’ Illustration: Adam Parata/The Guardian

It began with a conversation with two former crown prosecutors. These lawyers, in their 50s, had spent a large part of their careers prosecuting those charged with crimes, many of them allegations of sexual assault and rape.

We were discussing a submission from a victim-survivor who wrote anonymously for Guardian Australia about her own experience with the criminal court system after coming forward about sexual assault some three decades after it happened. Her story eloquently laid out the further traumatisation she experienced as she travelled through the court system, feeling that all the cards were stacked against her.