Newcastle crown court is an imposing red sandstone building that dominates the quay by the river Tyne, fronted by pillars and a wall of tinted windows. From the glass elevators, there are views across the water to the Baltic art gallery and the Sage concert hall, silhouetted on the bank like a Russian doll on its side.

Up on the second floor, in courtroom number five, the jury files in – nine women, three men – and the defendant takes the stand. He is 19 and nervous, fidgeting with a new shirt and tie. The public gallery is full, five rows of chairs filled with family and friends: a boy in a leather jacket and buzz cut who sits stiff and still, another in a shirt so tight his tattoos show through.

It is the morning of day two; the defendant is accused of raping his former girlfriend. His barrister, who is prone to pauses and chews the arm of his glasses between questions, picks up where he left off yesterday: when did the relationship turn violent? When she started drinking, the defendant says; she elbowed him between the eyes and broke his nose. Another time, she pushed a hot pizza in his face. He speaks rapidly, flushing when the judge asks him to slow down or speak up.

Did they ever argue about sex? Yes, he says, there was a position that hurt so he stopped. But then one day she told him: you raped me. What was your response, asks his lawyer. I nearly had a heart attack. That was it, the start of world war three. Why would she accuse you of this? She was trying to make me feel guilty. And did you? Yes, because I loved her to death. The defendant’s voice breaks and he begins to cry, reaching for a box of tissues.

His barrister reads out a series of text messages: What I done to you you didn’t deserve I love the bones of you. I never regretted anything so much in my life. What was he referring to there? I was talking about pushing her off the bed. The judge intervenes: Sorry, I am not understanding this – you regretted pushing her off the bed? Yes: it was the first time I laid hands on her.

The room fills with the rustle of paper as the jury goes through hundreds of texts, highlighted one colour for him, another for her. Him: I want you to let me cuddle you at night. Sorry for being a proper horrible cunt. “And,” says his lawyer, “that one ends with a kiss.” Her: I couldn’t even speak. You’re only with me because you’re scared I’ll tell. Him: Do it, I deserve it. Her: I’m not keeping your dirty little secret.

Sitting alongside the defendant’s family, Keith Woodhouse is making notes, pages and pages of them. A 63-year-old former magistrates clerk, he wears a navy suit and his handwriting is illegible, a pencil scrawl that travels up and down the pages. But it makes sense to him: when he types them up in the evening, his observations are clear and unemotional and succinct.

His ex-girlfriend gives evidence by video link, and is asked if she broke his nose. No, she smiles, but wishes she had

Today Woodhouse will have noted: that the judge reminded the jury there is no such thing as a stereotypical rape; that he granted a Section 41 application, allowing the defence to cross-examine the complainant about her sexual history (these are more often allowed when the accused is a former partner); that the complainant gave evidence by video link yesterday and appeared distressed. She was asked if she had broken her former boyfriend’s nose. No, she smiled, but she wished she had. That was a mistake, Woodhouse tells me, but he won’t put it in his report, because that’s just his opinion.

Woodhouse is one of 12 volunteers working as observers on rape trials at Newcastle crown court. Nine women and three men, they are social workers, nurses, academics and counsellors, some retired, some not. Since January 2015, they have sat on 30 trials and made a string of recommendations: that barristers meet their clients before a trial (this is rare); that complainants are better informed about the ways they can give evidence (behind screens, by video link, even off-site); that prosecutors attend specialist training. Their reports are shared with the senior judge, and there is much the observers have praised (judges who universally gave “myth-busting” directives to the jury at the outset of a trial), and some things they have not (a complainant asked by the defence if she was a “bunny-boiler”; a jury shown topless pictures another complainant posted on social media).

The scheme is the only one in the country, and was launched by Northumbria’s crime commissioner Vera Baird, who sits alongside Woodhouse today – a rare visit that doesn’t go unnoticed by the judge. At the break for lunch a clerk summons her to his office, and Baird shrugs and gets up to go. At 66, she has the loping long-legged walk of a teenage boy, six feet tall in a burgundy trouser suit and brogues, cropped red hair sticking up on her head. A former Labour MP and solicitor general, Baird has represented victims of domestic violence as well as miners during the 80s strikes. After footballer Ched Evans’ retrial last year, at which he was acquitted of rape, Baird was publicly critical of the decision to allow evidence from two men about the complainant’s sexual history.

Lunch is curry in the courthouse canteen, where Woodhouse is joined by Val Cottier, an observer who was due to sit on another trial, only the defendant didn’t show. Like Woodhouse, she is smartly dressed: pearl earrings, pink jacket, black blouse. He takes her through his notes: possibly the defendant was questioned for too long – 90 minutes without a break was tough on him. And was it a bit ham-fisted, the way the judge asked a juror who had been feeling faint if she was able to concentrate?

Before he retired, Woodhouse worked with young offenders and in the family courts; these days he is almost as busy, sitting on the local adoption panel, chairing another charity. “But I’m not watching daytime television, am I? I’m doing something useful,” he says. He is positive about the trials he has watched. “I observe good practice. This is a small thing, but a judge once moved his chair right over towards the jury on the last day – that was good.”

When the trial resumes, it is the female prosecutor’s turn. She is younger than the defence barrister, sceptical and coolly polite with the defendant. Was he controlling, she begins. Yes, at the start. In what way? Actually, he says, I wasn’t. She picks away at his explanation of their texts. It doesn’t make sense, does it, “your dirty little secret”? The defendant says this was a reference to anal sex. But why would she want to tell her family about that, the lawyer asks? And why would you tell her to do it, because you deserve it? She loses her patience: “Oh come on, that’s utter rubbish, isn’t it?” The defendant raises his voice: “I’m just a jack the lad, and this was the first time I laid my hand on a woman.”

The judge sums up, reminding the jury that, to convict, they need to be absolutely sure consent was not given. They should make no assumptions because the two were in a relationship. A clerk calls “God save the queen!” and the jury files out.

The lift down to the street is full, barristers in yellowing wigs with armfuls of paperwork crammed in next to witnesses, their mothers and sisters. There was no one in court today for the complainant; her friend gave evidence yesterday, Woodhouse says, but she struggled in front of the defendant’s family. The accused is in the lift, too, leaning against the glass window, pale and drained between two friends. On the steps outside they sit to share a cigarette.

***

In the five years since Jimmy Savile’s death, Britain has seen an unprecedented surge in the reporting of rape. Figures released by the government last October showed a rise of more than double since 2011, or an increase of 123%; 90% of them were women. Charities such as Rape Crisis report waiting lists for counselling that have grown from 25 at a single centre, to more than 70. This has unfolded at the national, institutional level – through Operation Yewtree, the Jay inquiry, the convictions of Rolf Harris and Max Clifford, the Football Association inquiry launched last November. But it has also happened on a local, individual level – away from the cameras, involving nobody famous. Can the police and courts keep up?

Many of the alleged crimes are decades old. One counsellor I spoke to, Sue Pearce at Rape Crisis in Newcastle, described what is happening in the UK as a “mass triggering”. She had recently treated a woman who at different times in her life had undergone electric shock treatment and been sectioned; finally, in her 70s, she told her daughter she had been abused as a child. Pearce’s shelves are stacked with tubs of toys, plastic dinosaurs, paints and crayons – not because clients bring their children with them, but because people come to talk about something that happened when they were pre-verbal, when they were last playing with bricks.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A remote evidence suite where complainants can testify by video link. They can also watch the remainder of a trial, something that is difficult to do in person. Photograph: Tessa Bunney/The Guardian

Last summer the Jay inquiry into institutional child abuse moved on to its fourth chair. At the most recent hearings, before he resigned, the inquiry’s QC Ben Emmerson told the courtroom that his team had already examined 35,000 documents; a parallel Truth Project, which encourages survivors to come forward, was hearing from 80 to 100 new people a week, with 20 to 25 of those referred to the police. A solicitor stood to marvel that this was “the biggest inquiry ever launched, breathtaking in scale. It is staggering to think of the work that will be done over the next four or five years.” Since then, that work has come under almost constant fire.

Meanwhile, the conviction rate for rape has gone up in the past year, from 56.9% of cases brought to trial, to 57.9%. But this is still down on a peak of 63% in 2013, and masks a bleaker statistic: of every alleged rape reported to the police, only 7.5% will result in a conviction. The great majority of cases do not go to trial, and it remains very hard to prosecute: forensic evidence is rare, because few people report immediately; it is often the word of one witness against another; juries are directed to convict only when they are absolutely certain – something that can seem an impossible ask.

In this country alone, there will be hundreds of thousands of women who have not reported rapes, for a hundred thousand reasons – because he was family, because they did not want to go to court, because they did not expect to be believed.

And I understand them, because it happened to me – and to many women I know. It was a long time ago, and I did not go to the police because he was the police. He lives in a country where it is too late to bring a prosecution, but it doesn’t stop me feeling horrible guilt. If women like me say nothing, rape continues to look like a freak occurrence – something to be instinctively disbelieved. I won’t be telling my story here – it has taken 20 years to write four sentences – but I know what it is to be shocked into silence, and to keep it that way.

***

There are no family or friends in the public gallery in Newcastle the following day, just me and observer Val Cottier, and Rachel Lawson, who works in Vera Baird’s office. It is day one of a different trial. The complainant will give evidence from behind a screen, and there is a delay while the clerk tries to close a one-inch gap with a peg. The defendant sits in the dock, wearing a navy fleece and trousers; it is 10am and he is drunk, muttering and shaking his head.

The jury comes in – five men, seven women – and the male prosecutor outlines the case. The man in the dock is the complainant’s uncle, he explains; she alleges he raped her at her home six years ago.

The complainant begins to give evidence, hidden from her uncle but able to look the lawyers and jury in the eye. Her voice is clear and confident. The prosecutor takes her through the night in question. What was she wearing when she went to bed? Pyjama bottoms and a vest. Underwear? No. Cottier makes a note. She writes fast; when the lawyers pause, she goes back through her A4 pad with a yellow highlighter to mark the important bits. She wonders if the complainant can read: why else did the usher read the oath out for her to repeat back?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Evidence stored in a cabinet at a sexual assault referral centre in Newcastle. Photograph: Tessa Bunney/The Guardian

The prosecutor continues. How long did the assault last? It felt like ages. What did you do then? I checked my daughter was still asleep in her cot and I held her hand. She begins to cry, and a clerk walks around the screen with a box of tissues. The judge smiles encouragingly and tells her to take her time.

She continues: I knew my boyfriend was due back, so I shouted at him to leave. Liar, the defendant mutters from the dock. But in the morning he was asleep on the couch, and he told me to get him a cup of tea. “I don’t drink tea!” the defendant shouts. “I drink black coffee.”

The complainant is not rattled. She had planned to give evidence by video link, from a room down the corridor, but at the last minute changed her mind. Why did she go to the police all these years later, asks her barrister? It was a storyline on EastEnders, she says.

Now the defence stands to question her. Is she sure she physically resisted, he asks. Might this be something she wishes she had done, but didn’t? I didn’t want him to, she says, firmly. She reminds the jury: he’s my uncle. Has she heard about people receiving compensation for this kind of crime? “I don’t want compensation,” she says, raising her voice, “I want justice.”

In the break for lunch, Cottier tells me how she came to be an observer. She retired from her job in child protection two years ago, at 67, but was bored within weeks, kicking around the house, her children both grown up. She read about Baird’s scheme, did an interview, did the training; today’s is her ninth trial.

Sometimes you want to cry for a person, but you can’t because then you’re no help. You’ve got to be factual

Like Keith Woodhouse, Cottier tries to be rigorously impartial. “I make no judgments. I am not the jury.” But this is not the same as being emotionally detached, and she has found herself thrown by convictions (“to see a mother’s distress: that was her child, no matter what he’d done”) and attending court for a verdict (not something observers are required to do). They all walk a fine line between empathy and objectivity, but her previous job trained her in just that. “Sometimes you want to cry for a person, but you can’t because then you’re no help. You’ve got to be factual, on both sides. It’s always high drama here,” she adds, “people sobbing or having a good snog on the stairs. It’s somebody’s life at stake.”

After the break, the accused takes the stand. His lawyer takes him through his account of the same night. Is it possible you had sex? I don’t know. Yes or no? Yes. Did you rape her? I wouldn’t do that. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. When did he first hear of this allegation? The defendant puffs out his cheeks and barks a laugh: “Now!”

How much did he drink that night? Nine pints and 20 bottles. And you don’t have a drink problem? Guinness is good for you, he says wildly.

The odds seem heavily stacked against the accused: the lawyers in their wigs and gowns who unpick his every sentence; the jury who learn quickly to ignore him, looking to the lawyers to make sense of things. His testimony is an alcoholic’s blend of localised recall and the fog of amnesia. Do you know what you did three months ago, he challenges the prosecutor. But I’m not the one charged with rape, the lawyer replies, and runs with it: how can you not recall having sex with your niece? You raped her, didn’t you?

“She’s a rat!” he shouts, angry and cornered. “And you’re cross-examining us!”

“Yes, I am,” says the prosecutor, and even the defence can’t help a smile.

The prosecutor sums up, and it is a good speech. It is a staple of TV drama since time immemorial, he says, the innocent man wrongly convicted. What is less often portrayed, and something I’d like to see, is how it feels to be a victim – to see your attacker acquitted. He tells the jury to focus on the many inconsistencies in the accused’s story.

The defendant stands up: “That statement is total bollocks. One hundred per cent.”

His lawyer begins. In the interests of realism, he says, I have to say a few things. The defendant was all over the place. But this case is more complicated than that. It is quite possible that none of you have been drunk. But I suspect that there are those of you who are drawing on personal experience – of that uncomfortable morning after the night you can’t quite remember. I would argue that this was a clumsy sexual encounter.

If the prosecutor’s speech was good, the defence’s is cleverer: an argument that asks the jury to ignore the accused, and decide whether they would convict themselves after a messy night out. The judge thanks him (“an excellent speech”) before turning to the jury and telling them they mustn’t try by guesswork. They must not speculate, even if the lawyers have.

The accused does not look at the jury as they file out, his eyes down and miles away. Suddenly there is muffled screaming in the courtroom next door: the verdict is in on yesterday’s trial. “Not guilty,” Rachel Lawson tells us when we get outside. She had been waiting with a paperback, and the corridor is already deserted of family and friends. Only half an hour before, the defendant’s sister had been throwing up in the toilet with nerves. Now they are all outside, whooping.

An hour later, the jury returns their verdict on the trial we heard today: not guilty.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders: ‘An acquittal doesn’t mean a case shouldn’t have been brought.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

What should the conviction rate for rape be? Obviously not 100%: there will always be defendants who are innocent. But it’s an interesting question, says the director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders. It is lower than most crimes, and probably always will be, because rape is more complex: it usually takes place in private, between people who know each other. This is both the most common scenario, and the one a jury finds hardest to convict – because the myth of the stranger and the blameless victim, Ken Clarke’s infamous “serious rape”, still has enormous currency. Scotland’s former director of public prosecutions, Elish Angiolini, recently published a critical review of trials in London, and tells me that “most people still think of rape as a Doris Day character being dragged down a dark alley”.

Both Angiolini and Saunders argue that a conviction isn’t everything. They know this is a difficult message, and Saunders says she would always encourage someone to go to court, “because we have the right support. But if we focus too much on prosecution or not, we don’t help those people who don’t want that. For some it is about feeling safe, knowing it won’t happen again. Some people come under immense pressure from their families or communities not to report.” Angiolini argues that the very low report to conviction rate, 7.5%, is misleading, because it is not the case that 100% of people want a court case. “They may wish to be removed from a position of danger, to be believed, to receive medical help or counselling.”

More cases are being prosecuted than ever before, but Saunders thinks the Jimmy Savile effect is overstated. “The increase is also down to the incredible amount of work that’s been done to encourage people to come forward – success stories like the conviction of the Oxford grooming gang. The courts don’t just look at the credibility of the victims now – they look at the whole picture.” Like Angiolini, she argues that the conviction rate is a crude measure of success. “The one thing I would really like to get across is that, just because there was an acquittal doesn’t mean a case shouldn’t have been brought, or that a woman wasn’t believed. The guilty verdict is a very high test.”

But while that test remains so high, where does that leave people who do want to see their cases prosecuted? Last month a 30-year-old woman won a civil case against two footballers for rape, the first of its kind in Scotland, six years after the crown decided not to prosecute. We have seen women and men resort to naming their alleged attackers on social media. In 2014, American student Emma Sulkowicz carried a mattress around campus after the man she said had assaulted her on it was exonerated by Columbia University (he denies the allegation). Bill Cosby has been accused of assault by more than 50 women, but is likely to stand trial for only one of them. President Trump was due in court in December, accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1994, until the civil suit was dropped days before he was elected.

There is a significant change in how people are understanding this crime. And those people are potential jurors

Saunders argues passionately that the process is improving. “Over the last year we have doubled our specialist units. We keep a close eye on the volume of cases, and work much more closely with the police, embedding prosecutors into police stations, and police at the prosecution level.” She adds that there has been a drop in other kinds of crime, allowing the police to redirect resources.

Angiolini is cautiously, similarly optimistic, even in the face of what she describes as a “tsunami of cases”. “Suggestions I made 20 years ago that were laughed at, are law now. There is a significant change in how people are understanding this crime. And those people are potential jurors who will bring different verdicts. Back in the 1980s, nobody had the word grooming in their vocabulary unless it was to do with horses. Since then there has been a sea change in the way people understand child abuse and domestic violence – and a lot of that comes from TV, the media, soaps, The Archers. I think we are on the cusp of that with rape.”

Does Angiolini ever think a jury is not the way to decide a case? In many European countries, they are heard (and investigated) by a specialist judge. “No. I like juries. The obligation is on us to give people an opportunity to understand better. The debunking of the myths has to be repeated, again and again.”

***

Sue Pearce is a young-looking 55, blond and energetic with a warm and open manner. Originally from Devon, she has lived in the north-east half her life, and spent years hustling for the small amounts of money that keep the Rape Crisis centre she runs in Newcastle going. On the day we meet, she launches a new campaign video (We Believe You) over a buffet of samosas and bhajis, and announces a lottery grant of £498,000. Over the next five years, this will pay for two more part-time counsellors, she tells the room to applause; they will be able to extend their telephone helpline hours.

Pearce is also a founder member of Baird’s observers panel. “My life is 98% sexual violence,” she smiles. “I can be overfocused. I’m no good at sticking up for myself – but if it’s someone else, I’m off.” When Baird first floated the idea of putting observers into trials, Pearce was sceptical. “I thought, ‘Woah, are you really going to do that? Are they really going to listen to you?’ But she did.” Since Baird became commissioner, Pearce says, the police and courts here have known that tackling violence against women is a priority. Two years after Baird took the job, a number of detectives were moved from the rape investigation team to other duties; more than 50 cases that had been “no-crimed” were reopened. “The police had had very little training, but it’s better now,” Pearce says. “There is more understanding – for instance, that people don’t report within five minutes.”

As observers, she thinks she and Baird make a good team. “We paired up on the first trial. She’s got a legal head on: why hasn’t the prosecution done this? I’m more victim-focused. I’d notice that, before the jury comes in, the barristers talk, and if you’re in the public gallery you can hear. If they were talking about my daughter – well, it doesn’t feel right. Another time, the screen in front of the witness was broken – the kind of thing you used to see around a hospital bed in the Carry On films. Or you’d see a woman giving evidence by video link from a room so tiny the male court usher would be practically in her lap.” Many of the women she counsels are now waiting 18 months or more for a trial date, making them more likely to drop out. The courts urgently need more specialist barristers, Pearce says, and the police could be better at staying in touch with women bringing cases. “Just a weekly text on a Friday – even if it was to say ‘No news’, even if it was automated. So she could enjoy her weekend.”

Pearce tells me about a woman she counselled who took her former boyfriend to court. “I was called as a witness but on my drive down to the courtroom, they told me they’d just read my statement out. I decided to go anyway, and it made me see I had stuff to offer. Only one person had stayed with her from start to finish, and that was me. She never met the barrister, apart from a hello a few minutes before the trial started. There were masses of texts to go through, and they’d transcribed them the wrong way round, marking hers as his – so she almost had to bring the case herself on the stand. And because there was only one toilet, she bumped into the defendant’s mother.”

Pearce came into court for the verdict. Not guilty. “And the family erupted like something on Jeremy Kyle.” The two women stayed in touch, and “there isn’t a day goes by that she doesn’t think about that trial. She can visualise every juror’s face. But she doesn’t regret it. Her life has panned out differently.

“She was a doctor. She was slightly older than him, and in court they played on that: ‘You’re older, you’re very educated’ – while he was portrayed as a cheeky chappy. And because her job was used against her, as a detail that made her less likable, less believable, that job she loved was never the same. She’s given training for barristers and judges down in London, and you could hear a pin drop. So she is different. But a good different.”

I didn’t go to the police 20 years ago because I didn’t expect to be believed. I was glad to be alive, and wanted to move on. I’m not proud of that: it is the women and men speaking up now, who are bringing difficult cases even when they are dismissed as fantasists and money-grabbers, who will force real change.

Would I win a case today? I’d probably face similar odds – a little better than 50/50, his word against mine. But beyond that I think I would be believed, and that is something surprisingly, powerfully new. Believed not by everyone, but by counsellors and lawmakers like Pearce and Baird and Saunders, who, step by step, are making a difference. Is it enough?

• Some details have been changed. Rape Crisis can be contacted on 0808 802 9999.

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