The woman who sued over rape: 'I needed to speak up'

‘I had to be brave,’ says Miss M, who fought on after a not proven verdict in the high court

Miss M was an intern for an English police force working with victims of domestic violence when she realised she needed to continue fighting over what happened to her.

It was 2016. A few months earlier, a high court jury near Edinburgh had cleared Stephen Coxen of raping her while she was too drunk to realise or resist after a freshers’ week party at St Andrews University. If the women she was working with had the resolve to report violence and rape, Miss M reasoned, she had to show the same courage.