Rape victim Bláthnaid Raleigh ‘thankful’ for intervention of strangers in aftermath of crime

Bláthnaid Raleigh previously waived her anonymity so Jonathan Moran could be named in reporting of the case.

Moran was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury of Section 4 rape of Ms Raleigh, in that he penetrated her vagina and her anus with a bottle and aggravated sexual assault in a garden shed in Galway on July 21, 2019.

Ms Raleigh told The Oliver Callan Show on RTÉ radio that until the verdict was delivered she felt she never “had the right” to say she was raped.

“I felt when I just explained to somebody or a friend or even the doctor or something, I’d say ‘oh, I was assaulted or I was involved in an incident’.

“I never felt I had the right to say I was raped because I didn’t have a conviction. When the verdict came back, I felt like I finally could say no, this is what happened. I was raped.” 

Ms Raleigh had been visiting friends on a night out in Galway on a “normal night out,” before she became separated from her group. 

At this point, she was invited back to a house party by another group of people her brothers knew from their home town, saying she “knew their faces”. 

She explained how it had ended up with just her and Johnny Moran in the house downstairs.

“It was almost like — I don’t think I’ll ever forget it — he switched off the light in the room. And it was with the switch of the light his personality completely changed.

“It wasn’t that I was with him the whole night. or anything like that. It was very platonic.

But with that light going off, it was just like a totally different person entered the room. And it just got very hostile, very quickly.

Ms Raleigh explained in the immediate aftermath she felt a “wave of calmness.” 

However, during the trial, when CCTV footage was shown in court, she described it as “one of the most harrowing things,” saying it was like a horror movie because she “knew what happened”. 

Footage showed her leaving the house that morning with no shoes on and her things in her hand.

“The minute the door closes. It just all falls apart and I started to cry. And I made a phone call to my boyfriend at the time.

“I never spoke I just cried and cried and cried and I was walking.” 

She then happened upon a busier area where people were leaving a casino, where a girl encountered her and asked if she was okay.

However, an intervention from a man who had been watching their conversation proved to be crucial.

Ms Raleigh explained: “I was shaking. And this guy had kind of been watching and he kept saying ‘there’s something not right about this girl — something has happened to her. She’s not that upset because she can’t find her friends’.

“He had a really good instinct and he kept saying to me: ‘I think you need to go to the gardaí. Will you just let me walk you to the guards because they’ll find your friends, they’ll get you — we can’t drive now’.

So him and this girl walked me to the Garda station in Galway that morning. I never saw him again. I never got to know his name but I have so much to thank that man for because that meant the guards got into the house by nine o’clock that morning.

“I got to the sexual assault treatment unit that morning which meant DNA could be obtained, all of that kind of stuff, the crime scene had basically been untouched. All because somebody just said ‘something is not right here with this girl’.”

Without the intervention of the man, Ms Raleigh said she could have been looking at a “very different situation”.

She said she had lost five years of her life waiting for the trial, sharing a hometown with Mr Moran, who she said had “stayed quiet” all the way through the trial, something which she saw as “arrogance”. 

“He thought ‘yeah, I can do this and I can get away with this’. And I think his arrogance, in the aftermath of it by continuing to live his life, by his life not being fazed by this showed real arrogance and that he didn’t care after being charged.”

Ms Raleigh noted her horses “safely did more than any therapy or any service that I received” during the trial as it meant she had something to do each day.

“The minute I drove in the gate of the stables, it was just like pure bliss. It was everything just cleared from my mind and I had to change my focus. I wasn’t thinking of a court process I was thinking ‘when do they need to get their shoes done next’ or ‘have I enough feed for this week’. It just gave me great focus.”

She paid tribute to Tullamore Rape Crisis Centre.

“I find them excellent, you know, really, really good. I think our support for victims of sexual violence can do more. Like I said, I had never spoken to anybody that had been through the court process and I think there’s a different arm to support that we could look at in supporting victims, but I find them excellent. 

“And I would encourage anybody that needs their services to contact them. They’re excellent.”

– If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.