This is The Guardian.

Today, the MP Charlotte Nichols on what it's like going through a rape trial and losing. I propose to put a five-minute time limit on from after the next speaker.

Charlotte Nichols.

I've thought very long and hard about speaking today.

I'll allow Honourable and Right Honourable Lernard members from the legal...

This is Charlotte Nichols, the MP for Warrington North.

She's talking in Parliament during a debate about scrapping jury trials.

I wanted to focus my remarks on a particular perspective that I feel has been too often ventral acquiesed in this debate.

And I hope the House will be gentle with me in doing so.

As you might be able to tell, she is very nervous.

I have spoken before in this place about having PTSD as the result of being the victim of a crime, but I have never specified the nature of that crime and in doing so, I'm aware

that I am waiving my right to anonymity and the personal consequences that come along with

that.

I care profoundly about rape victims facing intolerable delays for their day in court.

I know only too well what that feels like, as after being raped at an event that I attended in my capacity as a Member of Parliament,

I waited 1,088 days to go to court. Every single one of those days was agony, made worse by having a

role in public life that meant that the mental health consequences of my trauma were played out

in public, with the event that led to my eventual sectioning for my own safety, still being something

that I receive regular social media abuse from strangers about to this day.

When her case finally reached court, it ended with the jury unanimously acquitting the man she

accused of rape. But still, she tells MPs, she does not think scrapping jury trials for lesser

offences will cut the backlog in the courts.

...