Blathnaid Raleigh: 'After the attack, I was gone. All the personality traits were gone. The things I loved to do were all gone. So I couldn't go back to being myself'

"That impact is a massive thing, across all the different areas of your life, you know? You lose all of yourself. Your hobbies, your friends, the things you love, all of that changes and I don't think people are aware of that."

"Bláthnaid Raleigh is talking about why she called her new book, Aftermath. We're sitting in the kitchen of her family home in Mullingar where the 27-year-old lives with her parents. It's a beautiful, calm home, all greys and pale blues. She has made tea and we're at a large wooden table beside floor-length windows looking out onto the garden. It's late afternoon, Bláthnaid is back from a day's work teaching in a local school."

Bláthnaid Raleigh survived a rape in 2019 and wrote Aftermath to describe the lasting consequences. She reports pervasive changes across identity, friendships, hobbies and daily routines. She lives with her parents in Mullingar and balances recovery with work as a local schoolteacher. She highlights that the impact of sexual violence reaches mental health, relationships and everyday life, and that public awareness of these cascading effects is limited. She chose the title Aftermath to name the sustained, wide-ranging effects that follow the assault and to give language to survivors' experiences.

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