In what only can be described as a brave, emotional and honest interview on last night’s RTE Ray D’Arcy show, Niamh Ni Dhomhnail spoke publicly about her ex’s suspended sentence for raping her.
Niamh spoke candidly about her ordeal, where she was raped while asleep by her former boyfriend, Norwegian national Meyer Hustveit.
Niamh said “He controlled me, mocked me, abused me in the place that we regarded to be our home.”
She told D’arcy that she has completely changed since the incident and that she is no longer the outgoing person she once was.
She said prior to the incidents, she was a “relatively outgoing” young woman.
“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. 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,” Niamh she.
She continued as her disgust at her ex being given a suspended sentence after it was revealed her raped the woman when she was asleep.
However, she has taken some positives from her experience. She recently joined the Ask Consent campaign, along with Tom Meagher, the husband of the late Jill Meagher from Drogheda. Jill was tragically raped and murdered by Adrian Bayley as she walked home in Melbourne in September 2013.
A harrowing but brave interview.