Sexual assault victim who named her attacker in blog defeats his libel action

High court judge rules Nina Cresswell's account of Billy Hay's attack is true on the balance of probabilities

A woman who wrote about being sexually assaulted, naming her attacker, has defeated a libel action he brought against her after a judge ruled that her account was true on the balance of probabilities.

Nina Cresswell was sued by Billy Hay over a blog and social media posts she wrote in 2020, as the #MeToo movement exploded, saying that he violently assaulted her 10 years earlier. She said Hay, a well-known tattooist, attacked her when she was aged 20 as she walked home from a nightclub in Sunderland where they had met earlier that evening.