Widespread sexual assault during New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne last year gave new momentum to a movement to reform Germany's dated sexual assault laws. Do the new rules better protect women from sexual violence?

Miriam never leaves the house without a can of mace in her bag, and doesn't walk the streets at night without frequently glancing over her shoulder.

The 19-year-old high school graduate wasn't always this fearful. Her outlook changed a year ago, when she became one of scores of sexual assault victims during New Year's Eve celebrations in the western German city of Cologne.

Miriam, who asked for her last name to be withheld, was walking through her Cologne neighbourhood with a girlfriend early on January 1, 2016, when two men attacked them from behind and threw them to the ground.

"When you witness violence like that - that feeling of powerlessness - it changes you," says Miriam, adding that she struggled and screamed until her attackers took flight. She got away with bruises and a bloody nose.

Nearly a year on, Germans still have a hard time making sense of that night, which saw large groups of men gathered around Cologne Cathedral to assault women.

Hundreds of complaints of sexual violence were filed in the wake of the attacks, but many investigations could not be pursued because of a lack of evidence or because the suspects could not be identified.

"It's still hard for me to comprehend ... these hugely degrading incidents. And I can't seem to shake the question why the police didn't help. It's a terrible failure on their part," says Miriam.

At the time of the attacks, the legislative framework required victims of rape to prove that the suspect used physical violence or physically trapped them in a space from which they could not escape. Saying 'no' was not enough.

It did not take into consideration situations in which men take advantage of crowds in order to initiate unwanted sexual contact, as was the case on New Year's Eve in Cologne.

Rights activists say the laws lagged far behind most other European countries - where saying 'no' or 'stop' is enough to prove a lack of consent - and argue that this has contributed to an environment in which rape is seldom reported and conviction rates are low.

The most recent statistics from the German Justice Ministry indicate that only one in 10 victims of rape file a police complaint, and that only 8 per cent of those complaints result in criminal convictions.

"Every attack is an attack and should be punishable," said Roswitha Mueller-Piepenkoetter, a former justice minister in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the head of Weisser Ring, Germany's largest support organization for victims of crime.

"I do not know why the legislature for a long time was unable come up with clear rules stipulating that without the consent of the person in question sex should not happen - full stop," she told German private broadcaster RTL.

As the Cologne attacks sparked a flurry of debate about the courts' failure to punish rapists, another, less widely reported case added momentum to the movement to reform Germany's dated sexual assault laws.

German reality TV star Gina-Lisa Lohfink accused two men of drugging and raping her after a night out in 2012. The men posted a video showing Lohfink saying "stop it" and "no," but a court found no evidence of rape and fined the starlet 24,000 euros (25,350 dollars) for giving false testimony.

"There is something wrong with our justice system," Lohfink was quoted as saying by German news magazine Der Spiegel. "I have the impression that police and prosecutors aren't taking me seriously."

After months of debate, the German government passed new legislation in July. Not only does it classify groping as a sex crime, it also makes it easier to prosecute assaults committed by large groups.

Despite the milestone, doubts remain as to whether the new legislation will actually lead to more convictions.

"It remains to be seen what kind of concrete consequences an improvement to the legal framework will have," Renate Kuenast, a lawmaker for the opposition Greens party, wrote in an editorial for conservative newspaper FAZ.

"There were wrongful convictions under the previous legal framework and there will continue to be. Of course the ability to prove [sexual assault] remains the problem, but that cannot be a reason to maintain the status quo."