A WOMAN WHOSE ex-boyfriend was convicted of raping her while she slept, but then received no prison sentence, has given her first television interview since July’s court case.
Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill (28) was speaking on the Ray D’Arcy Show on RTE last night. Her appearance coincides with her new role as a spokesperson for the Ask Consent campaign.
In July her ex-boyfriend, 25-year-old Norwegian Magnus Meyer Hustveit, was convicted of raping Ní Dhomhnaill up to ten times while she slept between 2011 and 2012.
In a ruling that was widely criticised Hustveit had his entire seven-year sentence suspended. The judge argued that the case had only come about because Hustveit had admitted to his actions in an email to his victim.
In her interview last night Ní Dhomhnaill told D’Arcy that her life has been “altered” by her experience and that she has changed from the “relatively outgoing” person she once was.
“I suppose I would have been first on the dance floor quite a bit and just enjoyed being silly really with my friends. I enjoyed going for walks with my mom, with my dog….I enjoyed teaching a lot and I enjoyed working with young people,” she said.
I had a lot of ambitions and always had a lot of drive and realistically I don’t think that those things have changed a whole lot. I think that they’ve been altered.
I think that the focus of a lot of things has been changed but I don’t see that necessarily as a negative.
The Ask Consent campaign, a collaboration between the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and student representatives USI among others, is focussed on getting people to ask for consent explicitly before having sex.
However, Ní Dhomhnaill insisted that the campaign is no one-way street and is aimed at both men and women.
“I do think that sometimes with a lot of the rhetoric around this, I think men tend to feel a bit demonised,” she said.
I think it’s important in this campaign that there is the addition of ‘Did you ask him?’. It’s far too often regarded as a male on female action, which it’s absolutely not… the majority are but that doesn’t negate that there are male victims.
Ní Dhomhnaill said that she hopes her appearance on tv will resonate with and help other people, and that she wouldn’t be simply “preaching to the converted”.
“You want to hopefully reach people who are cynical about these things or who don’t know what to think about it so I suppose if I had one hope it would certainly be that,” she said.
Saying that she believes she is on the path to recovery, she added that while she can never be the person she was before, she no longer wishes to be that person.
I’d like to find that I’ll have focus and that some of that focus will come from the experiences that I’ve had.
My hope for the future would be that it helps, that I find a way to make this positive, to make constructive change.
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