In the wake of the Jimmy Savile revelations and the #MeToo movement, the number of rapes reported to the police in England and Wales has tripled since 2012.

But victims' bravery is not being rewarded.

In the last three years the number of rapes prosecuted and convicted has collapsed.

In the year up to March 2020, more than 55,000 rapes were reported to police.

With some rapes having multiple alleged attackers, fewer than 1,500 people were convicted.

This is the lowest number on record.

And the problem may be even worse. Rape is an extremely under-reported crime.

A large number of victims choose not to go to the police out of embarrassment, fear they will not be believed and not wanting to go to court.

The latest figures from the ONS estimate the true number of rape victims could be as high as 107,000 every year in England and Wales.

95,000 women and 12,000 men.

The CPS has launched a "five-year blueprint" to "drive improvements" in rape prosecution and conviction.

We spoke to Deputy Chief Constable Sarah Crew, the National Police Chiefs' Council's lead for adult sexual offences.

"It's undeniable... from report to conviction, we're seeing the lowest volume of convictions against the highest levels of reports that we ever have. It's something police chief constables up and down the country worry about."

In 2019, the CPS conducted their own inspection into falling rape convictions and found the criminal justice system, under-resourced close to breaking point, was to blame.

"Because of austerity, there are fewer detectives dealing with bigger caseloads. Those caseloads are complex and they have a lot of digital material attached," says DCC Crew.

"We're also seeing increased numbers of victims reporting. So the demand is increasing, at the same time resources are becoming more stretched."

When asked by Sky News about the impact of austerity on rape convictions, a Home Office spokesperson said: "We are conducting a full review of the criminal justice system’s response, recruiting 20,000 more police, giving £85m to the Crown Prosecution Service."

But a coalition of women’s rights groups say an intentional change in CPS rape prosecution policy is to blame for the fall in convictions.

The End Violence Against Women coalition believes the Crown Prosecution Service secretly changed their policy in 2017.

This effectively raised the bar for prosecution by "weeding out" weaker cases and only prosecuting cases that were likely to win.

In July 2020, the Court of Appeal overturned a High Court ruling and granted a full judicial review into the CPS' rape charging policy, which will take place in early 2021.

Victims' Commissioner Dame Vera Baird QC is leading the case against the CPS.

"We’ve prosecuted 1,000 fewer each year since this change of policy. That suggests there are people who shouldn’t be free, who are free," she told Sky News.

"If you only take rock solid cases, you don't convict a lot people. And that’s what has happened. It's a clear policy from the CPS, which needs to be reversed today.

"Rape is a serial offence... People who are rapists, will carry on raping until they are stopped and they don’t think they are going to be stopped at the moment."

The CPS told Sky News: "There has been no change of approach in CPS prosecutions of rape. In every case referred to us we will prosecute whenever our legal test is met, no matter how challenging it is.

"The Court of Appeal last month decided that other procedural aspects of the EVAW's claim should be the subject of a full hearing, which will be in argued in due course."

If a rape victim's case does make it as far as the courtroom, they often feel they themselves are on trial.

Because society as a whole still believes rape myths, our juries do too.

Defence teams will often make use of these myths to discredit victims and cast doubt in a jury's mind.

Kama Melly QC is a criminal law barrister with experience prosecuting and defending rape cases in court.

She explained: "When you are asking a jury to be sure of guilt, it has to be said, it doesn’t take much in order to knock the credibility of the complainant.

"A juror feeling almost certain or thinking that man in the dock has probably done it, isn’t enough."

In order to find a defendant guilty of rape, a jury has to be certain beyond reasonable doubt the defendant acted intentionally.

But rape usually occurs in private, without witnesses and without CCTV. Forensic evidence can even be inconclusive when determining consent. This means the testimony of the alleged victim and alleged attacker is often all a jury has to rely on.

As a result defence teams will often question the credibility of the victim themselves and base their inquiries in rape myths.

As Kama explains: "Some of the central themes that have been used by the defence in the trial, have been based on no screaming, no shouting, could have protected themselves.

"There were other people in the house. Would she really have spent the night after she'd been raped in that bedroom? Why didn't she go running out of the house at the time? You know, she must not be telling the truth."

Another common rape myth is the idea of "fight or flight" - that a rape victim will fight against their attacker or try to escape. But another common psychological reaction is to simply "freeze".

Kama believes this is one of the most pertinent and least understood rape myths.

"They expected that they would scream, and claw and fight back with everything they had but their survival mechanism in their brain made them submit. So they would walk out of that incident raped and psychologically scarred, but alive," she explains.