Nicola Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon will meet rape victim Miss M, who has campaigned for Scotland’s third verdict to be removed since her case against a man whom she accused of raping her was found not proven.

She subsequently succeeded in a civil case for damages which found Stephen Coxen to be a rapist on a balance of probabilities.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, Miss M said she wanted “to invest my time in something that would help other rape survivors and every rape survivor in Scotland”.

“A not proven verdict doesn’t feel like an end - you’ve been through this process for maybe two years, three years, and at the end of this process you expect it to be the end,” she said.

“But really it isn’t over for us. Some people say it is never going to be an ending with a not proven verdict.”

QCs previously told Scottish Legal News that there is no basis for the belief that abolishing the not proven verdict will lead to more people being found guilty of rape and could, in fact, result in “rogue convictions”.

Separately, an academic warned that removing the not proven verdict from the law as it stands will increase the likelihood of miscarriages of justice.