Sydney researcher wins Eureka Prize for work on domestic violence survivor testimony

In Sydney's Town Hall, forensic psychologist Helen Paterson received a Eureka Prize for research that quietly challenges one of the legal system's most consequential blind spots: the way courts measure the credibility of those who have suffered the most. Her years of study reveal that when trauma repeats, memory adapts — preserving the essential truth of what happened even as specific details blur across episodes — yet the law has long treated that blur as evidence of dishonesty. The prize marks a moment when science asks justice to look more carefully at what it thinks it understands.