Two and a bit years ago, an unusual email reached the ABC.
WARNING: This article discusses suicide.
It came from a woman in Victoria, and she was complaining that our coverage of sexual assault cases was too negative.
She told us that didn't reflect her personal experience.
"I, myself, have made a report over a year ago and had a fantastic response," she wrote.
"Negative media coverage made it even harder for me to report this matter due to how horrible I thought the process would be."
At the time, allegations of a rape inside Parliament House had just broken. And the then attorney-general, Christian Porter, was denying a historical rape allegation. Women had walked out of parliament and taken to the streets.
So, she set us a challenge: A positive story about making a rape allegation.
"A story about how healing and empowering it can be to report a rape or sexual assault would go a long way in encouraging people like me, to have the courage to make that report," she wrote.
So we put forward a counter-offer: let's follow your process and see if you feel the same down the track. She agreed.
Picking up the phone
Meagan's story begins four years ago, when in the middle of a work day, she picks up her phone and calls the police.
She's reporting an allegation of rape that she says happened to her as a teenager.
Meagan has been watching true-crime documentaries and is alarmed by how many of the perpetrators start out as sex offenders.
"I never wanted to have to look another victim in the eye or a victim's family and explain why I didn't say something that could have stopped him from hurting somebody else," she says.
When she first makes that phone call to police, Meagan expects to be dismissed, but Victoria's specialist sexual offending unit takes her rape allegation incredibly seriously.
"It felt like I had achieved what I set out to do and it was done and I'd never have to give that statement again," she says.
But she's wrong. A few months later, police call her back.
They want her to phone the alleged rapist while they record. She hasn't spoken to him in over a decade.
It's the scariest thing she's ever done.
"I couldn't even imagine what his voice would sound like because I spent so long blocking out any memories of him," she says.
"But I was also ready to kind of take back that power from him."
First, she sends him a message saying she needs to chat. Then, script in hand, she calls five times.
He doesn't pick up.
And at this point, she thinks, that's the end of it.
But eight months later, police arrest the man, and nine months after that charges are laid. Meagan is in shock.
"I spent so long trying to forget that this thing ever happened, and the fact that the police have taken it so seriously just kind of reiterated to me that not only did it happen, but there's enough evidence of it happening to cause an arrest," she says.
Meagan can't believe "that anybody outside of my immediate circle cares enough to do something about it".
But she's also terrified of repercussions from the accused.
"I was not leaving the house. I was not throwing any mail…with my details… into the bin. I was just really paranoid."
Facing the accused
Before the case can go to trial, Meagan has to appear as a witness at a committal hearing so her evidence can be tested.
In December 2021, two and half years after she first phoned the police, she takes the stand, giving evidence via video link from her local Office of Public Prosecution.
"From 10am till about 10:10am, I was just frozen solid, just staring into the camera, just waiting for it to start," she says.
"And then the screen lit up in front of me and I could see a whole row of names down the bottom. And I could see the name of the accused on the screen and that was very scary and confronting."
The prosecution suggests she cover his face on the screen with a Post-it note.
At first, the questions are pretty straight forward. "You attended this police station at this time and signed this. Is that true and correct?"
But over the day, they become more and more confronting.
BARRISTER: You suffered some trauma in your life surrounding your mum, is that right?
MEAGAN: Yes.
BARRISTER: I'll take these questions as carefully and as slowly as I can, if you need a break, just let me know. Is there a point where your mum attempted to commit suicide in the family home?
MEAGAN: Yes.
BARRISTER: Did she do that leaving blood everywhere?
MEAGAN: Yes.
Meagan says while the defence is"really trying to rattle" her, she's getting used to the cross-examination. She looks dead into the camera and answers.
BARRISTER: You were required, as a younger person, to have to clean that blood up and assist her, I take it?
MEAGAN: Yes.
BARRISTER: Your mum tried to harm herself in your home on more than one occasion?
MEAGAN: Yes.
BARRISTER: Approximately how many times had you been exposed to your mum trying to harm herself?
At this point, the judge intervenes.
"I was put back into the lobby for a few minutes, kind of took in the fact that there are eight or nine people on this call who are hearing all about my personal family stuff and just kind of thought, 'Well, f**k it… There's no privacy, there's no dignity in this. So if that's how it's going to be, then I'm fighting back. He's not winning.'"
Meagan suspects the barrister is trying to muddy the waters about the source of her trauma. To her, it feels like gaslighting.
"There was a point about an hour later… he kept asking the same thing over and over again … trying to catch me out. 'You meant this. I know you meant this.' And I put my hand up and said, 'I'm sorry, but I need a break'.
"I could see that he was rattled. And that was so empowering and that was amazing.
"That's when I realised, 'Wow. It's been a whole day and he has not broken me and he will not break me, because all I have to do is tell the truth. And I feel like I'm winning.'"
Asking the hard questions
Jimmy Singh is the principal lawyer at Criminal Defence Lawyers Australia. His website boasts his track record of winning "seemingly unwinnable cases", and he rattles off a laundry list of them: "sexual assault, child sex matters, child abuse materials…"
He says cross-examinations can be gruelling, but it's important for the defence to ask those difficult questions.
"Without testing the evidence, the jury won't be able to properly assess and give it appropriate weight," he says.
"Having an innocent person convicted and go to jail is worse than having a guilty person let free."
He says there are restrictions on what defence lawyers can ask witnesses — "questions about their sexual history, reputation and experience, particularly".
Meagan's first day of cross examination took six hours, but she feels confident going into day two.
"I'm the one in power now, and that feels pretty good, after being in a powerless position," she says.
"And it really felt like I was making a point of being there, of telling the truth, of looking into the camera or at the accused name on screen."
And then it's over.
"I was confident that the prosecution team would say that I was a damn good witness… And I was confident that the accused was looking on and worrying about who he had picked as a victim. Probably realised that he'd made the wrong choice," she says.
The next day she gets a call — her case is going to trial.
She says it feels like a victory.
"The amount of times I've had to say his name — a name I've avoided saying for so many years, that I've had a panic attack if I've seen — having said it so many times now in a setting where I'm the one in control… as of today, I have no issues saying it," she says.
Life on hold
Eight months later, Meagan is shopping in Aldi when she gets a call from her police contact.
"I had the shopping cart in one hand and my phone in the other hand… And then as soon as they said, 'We have a trial date', I stopped walking and I just looked at my partner."
The trial date is in May — another nine months away.
"It was really crushing because … One of the hardest things is looking into the future and knowing that this is still going to be going on for a while," she says.
"Like, moving house — I don't want to do that before a court date. Or, I'm planning out tattoos and then thinking, 'that'll have to wait for a year'.
"And it's just really annoying to have things on hold for him."
Four months later, a year to the day since Meagan's committal hearing, news breaks.
Brittany Higgins has been hospitalised for her mental health, and there are fears for her life.
The news hits Meagan hard.
"I just immediately broke down. I just had to log off from my computer and go and sit on my bedroom floor," she says.
"It just terrified me that she's now in hospital.
"If it's broken somebody like her, then how am I supposed to survive?"
And then there's a wave of fury as well.
"Why do I even have to worry about being in hospital just for answering a legal summons, that I'm now obligated to do?
"When does it stop feeling unfair?"
Meagan wonders whether she should withdraw from the trial to protect herself. But she decides it's too late.
"I'm already realising, it's a horrible shitty thing, but that was predetermined so many years ago. So I may as well do something about it," she says.
The trial
Almost four years after she phoned police in the middle of a work day, Meagan wakes up to find an officer outside her door.
He hands her a subpoena. The intimidating visit is the final indicator that this is happening, and there's no way out:
"It's just so far beyond this dark little secret that it was for such a long time", she says.
Three weeks later, the trial begins.
As the prosecutor outlines graphic details of the alleged offence, the accused's father shakes his head. Such explicit details seem out of place in a room where everyone's in robes.
Then, it's the defence barrister's turn. He says the incident never happened, and that Meagan is not credible.
The accused is wearing a neat suit and looks unfazed. But when Meagan is called to give evidence, panic flashes across his face.
As they prepare the video link, the courtroom is closed for her privacy.
Afterwards, Meagan says her cross-examination was far less stressful than the committal hearing.
This time, there was nothing about her family. Instead, the defence focused on inconsistencies between what she said happened, and what others remembered her telling them.
Each person's accounts were all slightly different. Even Meagan's own diary entry contained some discrepancies.
"One of the questions was, 'Was he wearing a top at the time?'
"I know that in my diary entry I said that he wasn't. And then in my police report, I said, 'I think he may have been wearing a T-shirt and I think it was beige or grey, but I'm not entirely sure.'"
The incident is alleged to have occurred more than a decade ago. But the case hinges on the witnesses recalling details like this.
And one witness's account diverges more substantially. This witness recalls Meagan describing being raped in a different way to how the prosecution has outlined.
It's those gaps in accounts that the defence will seize upon.
'Feels a bit like my trial'
The court is an intimidating place to reveal your trauma. The police out front, the security scanners and officious guards make even visitors feel a bit like criminals. And the bowing, the robes and standing for the judge are constant reminders of the hierarchy at play. But it's telling her story in such a formal setting that's so validating for Meagan.
As the trial continues, the experience is like a tug of war between empowering and disempowering, as her story is repeatedly told, and then torn apart by the defence.
What's more, the accused gets to see every document, while she's restricted from knowing his arguments, which witnesses will be called, and what they're saying. She says it feels like he has all the power.
"There's a roomful of people discussing my experience and … whether I'm trustworthy and how they can undermine me … and I'm not even allowed to know what they're saying," she says.
The accused chooses not to take the stand, while Meagan is cross-examined over two days: "It sometimes feels a bit like my trial."
On the second day of cross-examination, the defence gets to its point: that she's making it all up.
"It was a lot more emotional today than it was yesterday," she says later.
"It was just really confronting to have talked about it for so long and gone into so much detail and then to actually finally have somebody just look … right into you and say, 'I put to you that this never happened. I put to you that you are making this up, that you were lying'.
"When the propositions started … it was a lot less personal. It was really strange details … such as saying there was no coffee table in that room … and I nearly wanted to laugh.
"Then when it got to saying, 'I put to you that … Mr. X never raped you'… I just felt like I needed to take a breath. And then I responded with, 'No, that's incorrect. Mr. X did rape me'."
On the stand, Meagan is shaking and losing her voice.
And then suddenly, the judge says it is over.
"I was now free to go. And it was said in a way that felt really uplifting," she says.
"And then the feed was cut in the room. It was just so abrupt."
Afterwards, Meagan meets with the prosecution team, who say she's done everything she can.
Her husband is allowed to join the meeting: it's the first time they're able to discuss the case freely, because he was also a witness.
While on the stand, she'd discovered some details in his account didn't match hers.
"It was about 10 years ago that I spoke to him about the incident. Going through this process, we've realised the huge difference between how you would tell a story when you talk to someone that you know versus how you would recount an event to the police when you're giving a police report."
Meagan's discipline, to not compare notes with her husband, would have an impact on her case.
In his closing argument, the prosecutor tells the jury that all the witnesses are broadly consistent and their accounts go back over a decade.
And he reminds them about Meagan's diary entry which she wrote years before reporting.
Then, the defence barrister begins: "Beyond. Reasonable. Doubt. Not probably. Not possibly. Beyond. Reasonable. Doubt," he tells the court.
He then forensically lists the discrepancies in witness accounts, in his slow, convincing style.
The jury retire to consider their verdict.
'Word against word'
A couple of blocks from where the jury are deliberating, retired judge Anthony North says cases like Meagan's are difficult to prove "beyond reasonable doubt".
"The circumstances of sexual offending are usually two people on their own, word against word … and it's often just impossible for a jury to disentangle that," he says.
North's organisation, the Victorian Law Reform Commission, recommends better access to options besides criminal prosecutions, such as civil cases.
Such cases are brought by individuals, not the state. They don't involve jail time, but can result in compensation. As a result, juries only need to be confident the incident probably happened.
North notes that "justice looks different to every victim survivor". While "some want to see their perpetrators locked up forever", others find closure through options like "restorative justice", where they do therapeutic mediation with the accused.
The verdict
The day of the verdict, Meagan's back home waiting by the phone. She gets a text message to say the verdict will be read in 15 minutes.
She wants to hear it alone, so she goes into the next room from her husband.
The court clerk calls up the juror acting as speaker.
'Do you have a verdict?' 'Yes'. 'What is the verdict?'
"Not. Guilty."
Meagan thought the verdict wouldn't matter to her. But it does.
"When I heard the words not guilty … my heart just sank instantly and I felt sick," she says.
"It was completely unexpected when I started to watch the video link … I was shaking so hard, hyperventilating. I don't think I'd ever been in as strong a panic."
When she stands up, she has to hold onto the wall.
She calls to her husband in the next room — "Did you hear that?"
The crushing disappointment, she says, is "The realisation that, unless you have some kind of irrefutable physical evidence, that burden of proof of 'Beyond a reasonable doubt', I think just is not possible."
"I certainly don't disagree with the jury. I'd probably make the same call — I was told that the instructions included phrases such as 'If you think it probably happened, you have to say 'not guilty'. If you think it almost definitely happened, you have to say 'not guilty'.
"'You have to know beyond a reasonable doubt that it did occur in this way to come to a guilty verdict'.
"So, knowing that it took four hours to come to that conclusion, I know at least that I was believed."
Was it worth it?
Four years after she began this process, Meagan says she has no regrets.
"I would do it a hundred times over if each time I got to say, 'This happened to me'," she says.
"It's difficult to recommend [reporting] knowing that … I'm a white female in a hetero relationship with a stable income and a roof over my head. And I know that there are a lot of people who aren't in my position who would have barriers that I couldn't even imagine to making this report.
"I would recommend to anybody who is in a position where they can take on that kind of challenge that it's definitely worth doing."
Meagan says the process allowed for healing.
"It stops being just this horrible dark memory in your brain that stops you from doing things and wakes you up at night and follows you everywhere you go, to suddenly being part of the real world," she says.
"It was explained to me at some point that it's not me versus the accused … It's the state charging the accused person of the crime. And I'm part of that state.
"I've been validated as an important member of the community who deserves justice. It's absolutely life-changing."
Still, there's room for improvement. She'd love to give feedback, but no-one's asked.
"There's certainly a legal outcome for the system if they want to be able to press charges and have a guilty verdict. But the other element to success in this process … is how the victim copes with it — having somebody walk away saying, 'I'm so glad I did that'.
"And in my case, that's certainly the victory that I have."