Naming of rapist Jonathan Moran has brought ‘great comfort’, Bláthnaid Raleigh says

A woman who chose to waive her anonymity so that her rapist could be named has said she takes “great comfort” from the fact that people now know what her assailant did.

Bláthnaid Raleigh, from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, was speaking outside the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin after Jonathan (Johnny) Moran, of Tower View, Mullingar, was sentenced to nine years in prison, with the final year suspended, at the Central Criminal Court for raping her in Galway in 2019.

She said that in the period after the attack Moran, who had pleaded not guilty, “walked around locally, with his head held high, and continued to play rugby and socialised in his rugby club and continued with his job”.

Ms Raleigh said people now know exactly what “he was hiding during that time, when I was locked away, not doing anything, totally isolated in the aftermath, and that brings me great comfort”.

One of the most traumatic aspects of what had happened to her, she said, was that Moran’s life had “continued to be completely normal” while her own had been “completely shattered” with everything she knew and loved taken away.

Ms Raleigh was 21 when she was raped by Moran after meeting up with him at the Galway Arts Festival and going back with others back to a house where he was staying. Moran played rugby in the club in Mullingar with Raleigh’s brothers and was known to her. She went with him from the house to a shed outside, where the assault, in which Moran used a bottle, occurred.

She told reporters she decided to waive her right to anonymity because it might help others or give them comfort. “They could say, ‘she’s like me, or looks like me, or has the same kind of lifestyle as me’.”

Ms Raleigh said she believed it was important for society that Moran’s name was out there.

“When you think of sexual violence, you think of older, creepy men. This guy was young, he was 21 at the time, like any of our peers, and I think as a society we have to look at that, that it is not so far away, that these crimes are happening in our locality, that they are young people as well… younger people can’t acknowledge the fact that these crimes are happening within their circles as well.”

When delivering Moran’s jail sentence, Mr Justice Tony Hunt issued a warning about the importance of consent, which Ms Raleigh later said was “a massive issue among younger people”.

She added: “I think we have a misconception that we are so highly educated on consent. I don’t think we are.”

However, in her own case, she said she did not think “education was going to make a difference. I think that some people are just going to do bad things. Some people are just bad.”

What was important to her about the sentence given to Moran was that it validated her belief about what had happened to her and meant he could not any longer avoid facing up to what he had done.

“Sometimes you think was it that bad? Why can’t I move on from this?”, she said, but the sentence Moran received confirmed that what happened to her was bad.

“You get comfort from that,” Ms Raleigh added.