THE SHANNON woman whose bravery in going public about her rape ordeal is believed to have prompted other women to report sex assaults to gardai, says she is “delighted that they found such courage”.
Mother of four, Fiona Moran, gave an interview to the national media last July, revealing how she had been raped by a gang of boys she thought of as friends when she was a teenager.
Last week, gardai revealed that the reporting of sex assaults – many of which happened decades ago – had taken a huge leap in Shannon in this year, a fact which Rape Crisis Midwest says is in all probability due to the interview.
Speaking to the Limerick Post, Fiona said that she is “appalled that people have gone through that terrible experience, but delighted if anything I said helped them to come to a point where they felt they could make an official report”.
Fiona’s ordeal happened when she was just 15 years old. A gang of six boys who were, until that moment her friends, chased her into a wooded area and raped her.
Shannon is a rural town. At 15, the last thing you want is to stick out like a sore thumb in a rural area. Then there is the terror of not being believed. That is so important to people who have suffered a sexual assault, to be believed”.
After her interview, Fiona said the outpouring “of support and love was just unbelievable. There were texts and Facebook messages, a lot of them from people who were in school with me at the time”.
One of the men involved in the attack on Fiona walked up to her in a shopping centre years later and apologised.
“It must have been on his mind to approach me. He just came up and said he was sorry, that what happened to me shouldn’t have. I was stunned”.
Fiona has conquered much of the consequences of the terrible things done to her, enough to come back fighting and to be an advocate for other people who have endured what she has gone through. She has trained and worked as a Rape Crisis counsellor and helps survivors go through with reporting to gardai and the forensic exams which are vital to investigating sex crimes.
“The services provided by Rape Crisis are so much more than counselling. It’s all about the person who has been attacked and whatever they need, from someone to be with them for the forensic exam to accompanying them to court, if they go down that road”.
Fiona is doing a degree in criminology and hopes one day to be a full time advocate for survivors of sex crimes.
“It took me a long time but I have survived, and I want people who have gone through this to know that they can do it too and that there is support there for them”.
