We are nearing the finale of season three, when the storyline twists and characters evolve and we are invited to question all we thought we knew. In the same way that it’s harder to care about statistics (like the proportion of rapes being prosecuted in England and Wales dropping to just 1.7%) than stories (like the new book by Chanel Miller, a blistering account of her sexual assault), perhaps it is easier to think of rape in these terms. As a horror show, unfolding.

Yesterday over lunch I read the news that, as Carl Beech was jailed after fabricating claims of historical rape, a former High Court judge concluded that the “instruction to believe a victim’s account should cease.” “Sure,” I said aloud, darkly over tea. This came after the End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW) pointed out that, judging by the woefully low rate of prosecutions, rape appears to have been decriminalised, an idea that continues to roll around my mind like a marble. Along with the ancient image of a thong.

Where once victims were humiliated in court by defence barristers holding up the underwear they wore on the night of the attack, today they are presented with old text messages or photos, which do the same job as the asking-for-it underwear, but in higher resolution. I spent my journey home reading Miller’s book and that night lay in bed watching Unbelievable, the Netflix true-crime drama based on a teenager whose rape was discounted by detectives. I slept, not well.

Both Miller’s book, Know My Name, and Netflix’s Unbelievable shine a torch on the reality of sexual assault today, at a time when rape charges, prosecutions and convictions in England and Wales are at their lowest levels in more than a decade. Until recently, Miller was known as “Emily Doe”, the pseudonym of the “Brock Turner sexual assault victim”. Her case first became famous because of widespread public criticism of the judgment. Despite there being witnesses to the assault, as Miller lay unconscious behind some bins after a frat party at Stanford University and despite Turner being convicted of three counts of felony sexual assault, he was sentenced to only six months in prison, of which he served three. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner, a “promising athlete”. And second, because of Miller’s powerful, detailed, victim statement. “I was not only told that I was assaulted, I was told that because I couldn’t remember, I technically could not prove it was unwanted. And that distorted me, damaged me, almost broke me.” There are echoes of Miller’s experience in Unbelievable, as there are, inevitably, in all accounts of violence against women. The series opens with Marie’s rape and unravels from there, as minor inconsistencies in the victim’s story lead police to charge her with false reporting, before it becomes clear that the rapist has attacked again.

The stories impact our understanding of how stereotypes skew ideas of what makes a plausible victim

These sharp-edged pieces of… entertainment, story-telling that illuminates the life of an assault victim, do two things, as well as keep us up at night, teeth ground to Tic Tacs. They impact our understanding of how status, stereotypes and trauma affect a case, thereby, hopefully, upsetting juries’ skewed ideas of what makes a plausible victim. And they reflect a huge ongoing social change (where women are not only recognising assault, but demanding that institutions name it) and the shameful inability of the justice system to keep up with it.

EVAW is suing the Crown Prosecution Service, claiming it has covertly changed its policy and practice in relation to decision-making on rape cases, leading to the shocking fall in charges: the number of cases charged has dropped 51% across five years. At any other time, such a crisis in prosecutions would be argued on the front benches, but it’s a Brexit casualty. “Tumbleweed,” EVAW’s co-director Sarah Green said, over a bad phone line. She is clear too, though, that despite their current legal proceedings, rape will never be stopped through the justice system. The answers are in addressing the scale of sexual violence, with elected leaders understanding their responsibilities, with thoughtful interventions in schools, the welfare system, hospitals. With compulsory sex education that means porn isn’t a child’s default teacher on what sex is, who sex is for. With programmes on what consent looks like, on the impact of harassment in public places, the way it forces women to avoid the dark, or take the longer route home.

I’m often left hoppy and bitter when rape is a theme in my nightly telly, another body, another drink. But lately that agitation has moved upwards, to a place where I can recognise it as energy. As something useful, even positive. Horror stories rarely have happy endings, but it does feel, doesn’t it, that a change is due. As grim and worrying as the figures are, the swell of social change, and the new clarity of storytelling, must, surely, drag the rest of the world along with it.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter@EvaWiseman