In the past, their story was only heard through their victim impact statement during sentencing. For the most part, in every case, we heard from the judge and the defence lawyer a lot about the accused's past and why we should take that into consideration, but we heard very, very little about what was done to the victim, and most judges didn't usually voice the victim's story.
We felt that the court and the justice system wasn't really hearing the victim when it came to sentencing. It is almost as if the victim is not even part of her own case; the victim has nothing to do with the outcome. So we are really happy to see that from now on the judges will have to include the victim's story and the impact on the victim in their sentencing.