Early in the summer of 2020, Nina Cresswell sat in front of her computer screen, looking for advice. She searched “how to out your attacker” and looked at support pages for victims of sexual assault.
The #MeToo movement had exploded and women who like her had tattoos were using the #TattooMeToo hashtag to share stories of sexual assault. “I felt like every time I went on Instagram, I saw another predator in the tattoo industry being named,” she says. “It just felt overwhelming. I felt like: I’ve got to say it, how can I still stay quiet about this?”
So on 4 June, at about midday, Cresswell wrote about her own experience. In a blog post she said that a decade earlier she had been “violently sexually assaulted” by tattoo artist Billy Hay after a night out in Sunderland.
She wrote that he tried to kiss her and when she crouched to get away from his face, he pulled down his trousers and took out his penis. She said he had pulled down her shorts, but she managed to step out of them and ran away – leaving them as well as her phone, keys and bag behind.
“I feel cloaked in guilt at the thought of another woman going through the terror I went through,” she wrote in her original blog post. “The shame of being drunk, wearing really short shorts, not being believed by tattoo artists and not feeling any form of justice when contacting the police, has kept me quiet.”
Cresswell had gone to the police soon after the incident in 2010. Officers, who spoke to her before she had slept and while still under the influence of alcohol, said her account was inconsistent. She made the report at 6.33am – a few hours later, it had been recorded as “no crime”.
Deciding she would be quiet no longer, Cresswell messaged Hay’s partner, who worked alongside him. She posted her story on Instagram and on Facebook.
Then, on 27 July she received a letter from Hay’s lawyers, threatening legal action. It stated: “As you are very well aware your whole account of the events said to justify the allegations is completely false and a work of fiction. Our client has met you once in his life. You danced and chatted in groups but that was all that happened between you.”
“I was sat in my car and I just had a panic attack,” says the now 33-year-old, who adds that she was told she must remove the posts, pay Hay’s legal costs, apologise and state that what she had written was untrue.
“I was like: never. I will never apologise and say this is made up because it’s not,” she says. “And then it kept on going and going.”
Hay went to the police alleging malicious communication and the legal letters kept coming. Cresswell says she re-reported the original attack to police. When questioned Hays said he had left the nightclub with Cresswell, and had tried to kiss her but stopped when she moved away. Police reopened the investigation, but decided there was no realistic prospect of prosecution.
Eventually, almost three years after Cresswell wrote her first post, a landmark ruling at the high court this week found “that the defendant has proved on the balance of probabilities that she was violently sexually assaulted”.
The judgment by Mrs Justice Heather Williams could have far-reaching consequences for other alleged victims of sexual violence who speak about their experience, according to the The Good Law Project, which supported Cresswell.
Her lawyer, Tamsin Allen, a partner at Bindmans LLP, said it was the first ruling of its kind and gave “much-needed support and guidance to women who seek to name their attackers to protect others”.
Speaking the day after the judgment, handed down on her birthday, Cresswell says it was the thought that the case could a positive impact on others that kept her going.
“I think if I was doing this just for me, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago,” she says. “But now it’s actually arrived, I’m just so grateful that there is like a light at the end of all this horrible darkness. At least it wasn’t for nothing.”
Going through the case has been gruelling. For the first year she defended herself and her work as a copywriter fell away as the case took up all her time. “It is really lonely,” she says. “You can be sat in a coffee shop, and you just see everyone just going about their day. And you think ‘You aren’t being sued for defamation’ […] It’s really taken a toll.”
But she also talks about the support she has received. Like the donation to her crowdfunder from David de Freitas, whose daughter Eleanor took her own life days before she faced court on suspicion of making a false rape claim. Another woman told her she had been sexually assaulted while drunk and said Cresswell’s post was the moment she started to let go of her own shame.
After the end of the trial in February Cresswell wrote on her calendar: “Freedom. New year starts now.” But it didn’t, and couldn’t, until the ruling came through. “I didn’t know if it was going to be tomorrow or a month from that date, and that’s torture. I couldn’t even heal then. That’s all I want to do now. Just start recovering from it,” she says. She pauses and adds: “But I think being able to help others in this situation, that’s going to be part of my recovery.”
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
