If there’s no evidence of either litigants positions then there’s no grounds to bring a case to trial. On the woman’s part, it’s not hard to noodle through the scenario and figure out the low probability of success UNLESS she banked on the sociopolitical climate to stack the deck in her favor.
I’ve no doubt that part of the problem here lies in the legal professions tendency to take any case just to churn hours and hope for a lottery win. Who would encourage her to make this stand, 27 years after the fact, knowing that a loss could destroy her financially and reputationally? Hell, from a justice standpoint, if he really did rape her, she’d have spent those 27 years more productively plotting a physical revenge on him...
He sued her, she had to defend