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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Anna Moore

The rape survivor who spoke out: Ellie Wilson on the brutal reality of taking an attacker to court

‘I wanted to walk into court and show I hadn’t been defeated’ … Ellie Wilson.
‘I wanted to walk into court and show I hadn’t been defeated’ … Ellie Wilson. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The Guardian

On 26 May last year, Ellie Wilson sat in the witness room of the high court in Glasgow, waiting to be called. As chief witness, the rape victim in the trial of her ex-boyfriend Daniel McFarlane, her anxiety was off the scale.

“Any time the door would knock, I’d have this flash of black across my vision and the room would kind of spin,” she says. “It was the weirdest physiological experience. I was terrified in a way I had never been before. Then the clerk comes in dressed in robes and brings you into the court … I feel scared just thinking about it.”

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