A woman who wrote about being sexually assaulted, naming her attacker, has defeated a libel action he brought against her after a judge ruled that her account was true on the balance of probabilities.
Nina Cresswell was sued by Billy Hay over a blog and social media posts she wrote in 2020, as the #MeToo movement exploded, saying that he violently assaulted her 10 years earlier. She said Hay, a well-known tattooist, attacked her when she was aged 20 as she walked home from a nightclub in Sunderland where they had met earlier that evening.
Hay denied the allegations and sued for defamation but, in a judgment published on Wednesday, the high court judge Mrs Justice Heather Williams rejected his claim.
She found that Cresswell’s account was “substantially true”, reaching her finding on the lower standard of proof in civil cases, and also that it was in the public interest.
Cresswell told the Guardian: “I’m overwhelmed. Now I can actually speak about it, I can say publicly that he’s actually assaulted me and not have to skirt around the truth in fear of getting into more trouble. It’s just a really good feeling but I do wish that it never had to happen in the first place. As much as it’s a great victory, I still have to grieve the last three years and all the time that I’ve lost.”
Cresswell, who posted on Instagram and Facebook about the assault, said the #MeToo movement was a catalyst for going public, both because reading other experiences was “really triggering” but also because she saw that people were being believed.
“I also had guilt: ‘What if he’s done this again and I’ve not spoken out about it?’” she said. “Really I just wanted to have some accountability for what he’d done but to also make sure that other women were safe.”
Another factor was her anger at the initial police investigation – criticised by Williams as “superficial and inadequate” – which did not treat the assault as a crime.
The court heard that Cresswell told Northumbria police that the assault was “like a nightmare” but officers misconstrued her words, in a manner described by Williams as “frankly bizarre”, to mean that Cresswell had “dreams of being raped”.
Cresswell, who was assisted by the Good Law Project, which helped her raise legal costs, said: “I held a lot of anger for the police. I still do. But at least there’s been some acknowledgment by a high court judge that their investigation was unfair.”
Williams noted that there had been a “substantial change” in Hay’s version of events, describing his evidence as “less than credible” and “unsatisfactory”.
Hay’s lawyer raised questions about the fact that Cresswell had not made her allegation public at an earlier stage but Williams said there were all sorts of reasons for not having done so, including “fear of being disbelieved; a disinclination to re-visit a traumatic event; internalised shame; and concern about a negative backlash and/or being sued by the alleged assailant”.
Cresswell said she hoped her case would provide “guidance to anyone who was in my situation three years ago and is thinking about naming the perpetrator. If you don’t want people to speak about what you did to them, don’t do it in the first place.”
Her solicitor, Tamsin Allen, a partner at Bindmans LLP who represented Cresswell, said: “This is an important judgment that gives much-needed support and guidance to women who seek to name their attackers to protect others. It is the first such judgment, clarifying the law for victims of assault who have been silenced by their abusers and failed by the police. It is powerful testament to the bravery of Ms Cresswell in defending the claim over two years at huge personal cost, and underlines calls for reform in libel law so that public interest publications can more easily be defended.”
Allen said it was the first case of an abuser suing their victim for libel in which a public interest defence under the Defamation Act had succeeded. This applies when the statement complained of was on a matter of public interest and the defendant reasonably believed that publishing it was in the public interest, even if it turns out to be untrue.
