How sport was both healing and isolating in the aftermath of a violent sexual assault

Bláthnaid Raleigh's life was completely changed six years ago when she travelled to Galway for an annual arts festival in Ireland.

While on a night out with friends she ran into a group of people she knew from her home town of Mullingar.

One of those people was Jonathan Moran, who later that night at a house party violently raped her with a bottle in a garden shed.

Five years after the incident, Moran was handed a nine-year prison sentence with one year suspended.

The court heard Raleigh was left with extensive physical injuries that required months of treatment in a sexual assault unit.

The impact of the sexual assault had all-consuming impacts on Raleigh's life. Sport, which had been a constant in her life since she was young, became a point of both further isolation and healing.

'Lost so much of myself'

In the immediate aftermath of the assault, Raleigh found herself sad, angry and feeling extremely isolated. She said even showering became "really, really hard".

"I'd lost so much of myself — anything I kind of enjoyed doing as a young person in their early 20s, like going out and to bars, things like that, I just didn't do," Raleigh told ABC Sport following the release of her new book, Aftermath.

"My attacker was from the same town as me and so going into my local town to get my nails done or my hair done … They were the kind of things I used to love before and I really lost that whole thing."

One of the hardest parts for Raleigh was that between the assault and the conviction, Moran could not be publicly named. For five years, Raleigh had to watch her attacker continue socialising, working and playing rugby in the same town while she awaited the trial.

Raleigh waived her right to anonymity so Moran could be publicly named following the conviction.

The rugby club she grew up in and around, Mullingar Rugby Football Club, suddenly felt like it was being weaponised against her. Moran was a well-known player there.

"My dad, brothers, uncle, all played at our local club … So every Saturday, I was at rugby matches when the boys were playing. My parents, if they were going out, they were going out with people from the rugby club," she said.

"All these memories from my childhood, when I look back, are all linked to the club. And I think that kind of shows how sort of woven into the community the club is."

One of Raleigh's brothers played at Mullingar when the attack happened. As this is where Moran also played, Raleigh's brother left to join a rival club — something that didn't go down well with some in the community, Raleigh said.

"I felt really guilty that my brother had lost his club. His sport was huge to him and he had lost that … It was just really, really hard and there was a lot of guilt and anger — and I suppose there's still anger kind of in me towards that," she said.

Mullingar RFC expelled Moran from the club and issued a public statement to the Irish Times: "Mullingar Rugby Football Club was deeply shocked and saddened to learn on Monday of the crime committed by former member Jonathan Moran. We condemn and are appalled by this act."

Raleigh was disappointed with the response from the club, particularly in a lack of acknowledgement of the pain caused to her and her family.

She said it felt like a message had gone around the club: "Don't say a thing, don't talk about it, don't talk to Bláthnaid."

"In those five years leading up to the court case, nobody knew what was going on, and that was fine, and we just kind of put our heads down and got through," she said.

"I used to always say when they know, they're going to be so annoyed that he was still playing or mixing with them, or they're going to think how dare he.

"And then it came out, and it was on national news, national papers. It was everywhere … It got huge attention. And I don't know why, but it just was so evident that there was nothing from the club. There was just radio silence.

"I think one former player messaged and that was it … They had to be asked to take down his photos celebrating him off their social media … I remember thinking, there has definitely been like a committee meeting and they've discussed this and I remember being so hurt that the decision that they sat and discussed was to say nothing … That was so heartbreaking."

The club was contacted by the ABC.

Raleigh said she particularly felt bad no one reached out to her brother to say "we see why you left now" or "so sorry that happened to you and you had to leave".

She also wanted the club as a sporting organisation to make a strong stand for others to see.

She said rugby didn't have a great reputation for sexual violence and referenced the recent "rugby rape trial" - where Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were found not guilty of rape in a high-profile case — and "the French rugby story" where in 2024 a French court jailed three rugby players over gang rape that included Irishman Denis Coulson.

"So when you think of sport and gender-based violence in Ireland, rugby is very much linked with it," she said.

"That kind of annoys me about the sport, because I think, OK, you do have a problem. You do need to do something here."

'Getting some control'

Raleigh continued to try and piece her life back together, including wanting to feel better in her body. She tried to take back up running, but found she would often panic.

Then she joined a boxing gym.

"I loved it. I felt like I was getting some control [and] it was really good physically," Raleigh said.

"I would release that anger [and] guilt, but it was also a complete distraction, because boxing is so technical, I didn't have time to think of anything else. So it was like, for that hour, that 45 minutes I was training, I didn't think of anything else."

She said when she started light sparring, it was a huge step because it was letting someone in her personal space. Something she felt she could do because she found the community at the gym such a welcoming and safe space.

"And a lot of the times, a lot of the classes had more men, so I would be sparring against men. So I found it really intimidating at the start. I had to train my brain to think like he's not trying to hurt me, he's not going to hurt me, he's not attacking me," she said.

"Because for the first little while, I used to put my hands up and just kind of take it, and these guys were like, 'Oh my God'. But that release and also that sort of mental thing of, well, I kind of know how to protect myself if I have to, I could throw a punch.

"I felt fit and strong, and it was the first time I had sort of a sense of achievement about me since the attack had happened."

Yet while boxing has helped her in the aftermath of the trial, she said it was her horseriding and showjumping that got her through the five years following the attack.

She has three horses — Juno, Bravo and Jagger.

"If I hadn't had the horses, I don't know how I sort of would have got through it, because they were my non-negotiable. They had to be fed. So you couldn't let them starve.

"It was the one thing that I had to do when everything else was going so terribly. So now, even this year, I was doing my 2026 goals … and my goals are all surrounding the horses.

"I feel like I'm in the stage where I really want to push on and get more competitive … That's definitely my driving force in life now and in sport — everything I do is for that."

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