Legal Fund for Sex Trade Survivor
Donation protected
Rachel Moran left home just after her fourteenth birthday due to mental illness in her parents so severe that it resulted in the incapacity of her mother and the suicide of her father. She was homeless before the year was out and was in prostitution by the following year.
Rachel got out of prostitution at twenty-two, returned to education at twenty-four, and went on to obtain a degree in journalism in Dublin City University. She rebuilt her life and finally began blogging about her experience of prostitution in Ireland in the spring of 2012. Within weeks of her first blog post a deliberate campaign was instigated with the aim of discrediting her story. People who were politically opposed to her viewpoint began spreading libellous material online, deliberately designed to cast doubt over her history and credibility.
The following year her memoir was published, and from that point on the malicious rumours became even more widespread and pervasive. Rachel was accused of being a fake, a fraud and a fantasist. She was accused of fabricating her own abusive history.
One of the most shocking things was the amount of people with public profiles who were prepared to disseminate these rumours. Politicians, public servants, academics, writers and journalists all featured among those willing to smear her simply because they disagreed with her view that the sex trade is a place of inherently misogynist violence.
In October of 2016 Rachel met, on camera, the vice squad officer who arrested her for prostitution offences in early 1992, when she was sixteen years old. She thought that, after the documentary with that footage was aired, it would quash the discrediting campaign waged against her.
It did not.
Now, more than six years after this campaign began, Rachel has finally had enough. The day after an appearance on Ireland’s ‘Late Late Show’ an Irish journalist disseminated a libellous blog post written in 2013, which presents her as a likely fraud and liar, and used the #LateLate hashtag to spread this libel to as wide an audience as possible.
Rachel is now calling for financial support for a legal case to clear her name, and she calls on the international feminist community and on anyone who believes that survivors of sexual violence should be able to speak out about their abuse without being tarred as frauds and liars.
Every last pound/euro/dollar counts, and is warmly appreciated.
Meeting vice squad officer Alan Bailey
Rachel got out of prostitution at twenty-two, returned to education at twenty-four, and went on to obtain a degree in journalism in Dublin City University. She rebuilt her life and finally began blogging about her experience of prostitution in Ireland in the spring of 2012. Within weeks of her first blog post a deliberate campaign was instigated with the aim of discrediting her story. People who were politically opposed to her viewpoint began spreading libellous material online, deliberately designed to cast doubt over her history and credibility.
The following year her memoir was published, and from that point on the malicious rumours became even more widespread and pervasive. Rachel was accused of being a fake, a fraud and a fantasist. She was accused of fabricating her own abusive history.
One of the most shocking things was the amount of people with public profiles who were prepared to disseminate these rumours. Politicians, public servants, academics, writers and journalists all featured among those willing to smear her simply because they disagreed with her view that the sex trade is a place of inherently misogynist violence.
In October of 2016 Rachel met, on camera, the vice squad officer who arrested her for prostitution offences in early 1992, when she was sixteen years old. She thought that, after the documentary with that footage was aired, it would quash the discrediting campaign waged against her.
It did not.
Now, more than six years after this campaign began, Rachel has finally had enough. The day after an appearance on Ireland’s ‘Late Late Show’ an Irish journalist disseminated a libellous blog post written in 2013, which presents her as a likely fraud and liar, and used the #LateLate hashtag to spread this libel to as wide an audience as possible.
Rachel is now calling for financial support for a legal case to clear her name, and she calls on the international feminist community and on anyone who believes that survivors of sexual violence should be able to speak out about their abuse without being tarred as frauds and liars.
Every last pound/euro/dollar counts, and is warmly appreciated.
Meeting vice squad officer Alan Bailey
Organizer
Rachel Moran
Organizer
Dublin
