I was sexually assaulted by a celebrity after starring in a cult film at 19. My quest for justice changed the course of my life | Rape and sexual assault

Jenny Evans had simply starred in her first movie when all the things got here crashing down. Twin City was a riot of medication, quick automobiles and unhealthy behaviour labelled the “Welsh Trainspotting”. She had an exquisite time making the film, which was launched in 1997. There was a feelgood environment on set, and she or he received on brilliantly along with her fellow actors (Twin City launched the careers of Rhys Ifans and Dougray Scott). “Pals of the forged and crew have been coming down from London to Swansea as a result of the vibe was so good,” she says. “It was an awesome group of individuals doing one thing enjoyable. It was a blast.” Twin City turned a cult success, and the 19-year-old from Abergavenny discovered herself hanging out with celebrities and looking out ahead to a profession within the motion pictures. Then she was sexually assaulted by a high-profile determine and his pal.Virtually 30 years on, she has written a robust memoir. The assault is simply the place to begin. Don’t Let It Break You, Honey is the astonishing story of her struggle for justice and the way it led to a profession in journalism, uncovered corruption within the British press and the Metropolitan police, and performed a task within the phone-hacking scandal that resulted within the closure of the Information of the World.We’re sitting exterior a London bar and she or he is nursing a Food plan Coke. Evans is a girlish 47, the Welsh accent has lengthy gone, and she or he’s casually wearing denims and a sleeveless T-shirt. Her gold title necklace glints within the solar, and I’m squinting to learn it. Surprisingly, it begins with an F relatively than a J. I look extra intently. “Fuck it,” it says. She grins – a beautiful, toothy grin. “It’s simply to remind me that issues matter much less whenever you give a little bit of time and area to them, and to not get so caught up within the second.”Regardless of the reminder, it’s apparent that issues matter massively to her. It’s what’s pushed her on when she has appeared overwhelmed. And, regardless of the numerous instances she has been terrified, she has tackled these fears head on.Evans, who now lives in Bristol, grew up in a household she adored. Her mom, a therapist, was lively within the ladies’s motion and an everyday at Greenham Frequent; her father, an English trainer and Labour councillor, took her and her older brother Will on lengthy walks, recognizing kingfishers, skimming stones and reciting poetry. Life was idyllic. Then, when she was 13, her father died after an operation went unsuitable.Jenny Evans along with her Twin City co-stars, brothers Llyr (left) and Rhys Ifans, 1997. {Photograph}: Figment Movies/AllstarEvans was devastated and disrupted by his dying. She began to battle in school and dropped out of A-levels twice. However she pulled herself collectively, discovered her tribe in youth theatre and was forged in Twin City. Quickly after the movie got here out, she met up with the group in London for a reunion. On the finish of the night, she tagged together with one other lady to the home of a widely known man, unconnected to the movie. When the girl left out of the blue, she discovered herself alone with him and his pal, referred to within the e book as The Well-known Man and The Wolf. She requested them to name her a taxi, and that’s after they assaulted her.After the lads received bored along with her, they let her go away. The Wolf ultimately did name a cab for her. The motive force, a caring man known as Ken, mentioned he thought she had been raped and requested if he may take her to a police station. Evans advised him she wanted to sleep. She was uncertain precisely what had occurred, however she is aware of it was a brutal sexual assault. “Assault by penetration is what it was. The reality is, I don’t know what the penetrating factor was.” Evans says she thought The Well-known Man may kill her by accident due to the strain he utilized to her throat. “It was so violent. I couldn’t breathe.”As an alternative of reporting the assault, she withdrew into an online of self-loathing. Evans had at all times regarded herself as robust and impartial, however not any extra. “The assault revealed to me that I used to be not the grownup I assumed I used to be. I didn’t know after I was protected. I couldn’t learn rooms. I couldn’t belief my instincts. I used to be completely out of my depth and I retreated fully.” She left her mom’s home in Wales for London, but it surely was extra of an escape than a transfer ahead. She faxed her agent and advised her she didn’t need to be in movies any extra. “Inside a yr I’d utterly modified. I put a variety of weight on and I’d modified temperamentally. I used to be depressed. I felt my physique had labored in opposition to me, so I needed to vary it. I started to decorate drably. It was unconscious, however I felt I wanted to be completely different as a result of one thing about me made me unsafe.”She labored in a bar for a couple of years. A yr after the assault, she was raped by a supervisor when she was sleeping on a settee following an evening shift. He stopped when she awoke and pushed him off, and this time there have been no accidents. Nevertheless it confirmed to her that there was one thing weak about her; abusers may sense she was prey. Once more, she didn’t go to the police as a result of her self-worth was so low and she or he needed to maintain her job.One assault is unhealthy luck, two is careless – irrespective of the context – three, or extra, you are actually an undefendable, fantasist, lunatic slutIn 2001, when Evans was 23, Will was killed in a home hearth on the age of 24. She was distraught on the lack of her brother, however determined she needed to make one thing of her life for his sake. She utilized to do a level on the Royal Central Faculty of Speech and Drama. Evans now not needed to behave, however she thought she would make an excellent trainer and fancied attempting her hand at writing. She did nicely at Central, made many pals, moved in with a boyfriend, and recovered her equilibrium. It was seven years for the reason that assault, and she or he lastly felt her life had a way of objective.Shortly earlier than graduating, she got here throughout an article within the Night Normal saying that The Well-known Man had been accused of rape. In her naivety, she had assumed the assault on her was an opportunistic one-off. For the primary time, it struck her that he might be a serial offender and “different ladies may need been harm whereas I used to be hiding”. She determined it was her responsibility to go to the police. They listened rigorously and sympathetically. Though she discovered it aggravating, she felt believed.4 days later, her story appeared within the Solar. She wasn’t named (victims of a sexual crime are granted the appropriate to lifelong anonymity within the UK), however The Well-known Man was. The painfully private particulars she had advised the police in confidence have been there for everybody to learn. Evans turned paranoid. She began to mistrust these round her. Might her closest pals have betrayed her to the press? Had her home been bugged? Might her boyfriend, Neil, be accountable? However even he didn’t know among the particulars that appeared within the paper. “I hadn’t advised him there was multiple individual concerned, for example. You downplay these items for individuals you’re keen on. I felt frightened, embarrassed, humiliated, violated. I felt disgrace.”It was the early 2000s, a time when ladies who alleged sexual assault have been usually mentioned to have been asking for it or just making it up. The Well-known Man’s PR group set to work. Interviews appeared during which he was portrayed sympathetically and he recommended that the allegations have been false and had solely been made as a result of he was well-known. Evans knew she confronted an uphill battle. It was onerous sufficient to get a sexual assault conviction when the media weren’t spinning for the defendant.After a second interview, the police advised Evans that the Crown Prosecution Service had dominated that her proof was robust sufficient for The Well-known Man to be charged. She requested concerning the different ladies who had additionally come ahead, and was advised that, though they have been credible, their proof hadn’t met the charging threshold. Evans was alone. She subsequently found that greater than 40 ladies had made allegations in opposition to him.In the future, her pal Rachel found a letter Evans had despatched her years earlier than during which she wrote concerning the assault, named The Well-known Man and talked about different events when she had been sexually assaulted. Evans was delighted, believing it was important proof, and proof that she wasn’t leaping on a star bandwagon.She handed it to the lead detective anticipating his face to gentle up. Nevertheless it didn’t. The letter was problematic, and must be disclosed to the defence. “The letter discredited me,” she writes within the e book. “One assault is unhealthy luck, two is careless – irrespective of the context – three, or extra, you are actually an undefendable, fantasist, lunatic slut.”The extra I came upon concerning the tabloids, the extra fearful I turned, due to their attain, their energy, the corruption, the misogynyThe police advised her that she must inform them concerning the different assaults and that she could be cross-examined about them in court docket. Defence barristers would fortunately humiliate her to avoid wasting their shopper. Disgrace, she says, is on the coronary heart of her story. In the end, the prospect of being shamed publicly led to her refusing to speak concerning the different incidents. The CPS mentioned it had no choice however to “provide no proof” in opposition to The Well-known Man and a press release was launched saying that the fees in opposition to him had been dropped. Right now, Evans says, she needs she had sought authorized recommendation earlier than disclosing the letter.That Sunday, the Information of the World devoted a double-page unfold to her story. Once more, she wasn’t named, however the particulars from her assembly with the police concerning the letter have been all there. The article mentioned she had saved secrets and techniques from the police, which was unfaithful, and implied that she had accused The Well-known Man of assault just because he was well-known. The identical questions saved circling in her head. How did the Information of the World get this data? Did they pay for it? Was it authorized to take action? And have been the police concerned?Regardless of writing the e book, she nonetheless finds it onerous to inform her story. Her knees are tucked as much as her tummy and her arms are wrapped round them. “My physique language! It’s very guarded,” she says, laughing. “I simply needed to know what the fuck occurred. This ball of worry in my intestine changed into anger. I simply went, this isn’t OK. I’m executed. This isn’t OK.”That day she utilized for a spot to do a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Metropolis, College of London.After the case in opposition to The Well-known Man collapsed, the lead detective advised her she nonetheless may qualify for legal harm compensation, paid to victims of a violent crime who’ve suffered psychological or bodily accidents. He provided to use on her behalf, however she declined. When she found the journalism course value £5,000, she modified her thoughts. That cash helped pay her means by Metropolis College.Why did she need to turn into a journalist when the press had tried to destroy her? “I needed to grasp what this beast was that had so violated me. I sensed one thing unlawful had occurred and I needed to reveal that on some degree.”A number of weeks into her course, she attended a masterclass in investigative journalism by then Guardian reporter Nick Davies, who was about to start out an investigation into the state of British journalism. She determined that might be her path to getting a solution about how her story had appeared within the Solar and the Information of the World. Evans recommended they go for a cup of tea, and received straight to the purpose. Did Davies tackle researchers, and, in that case, would he give her a job?She began working with him on his e book Flat Earth Information, which was printed in 2008 and uncovered among the murky practices of British journalism. After graduating, she continued working with him on an ad-hoc foundation however spent most of her time growing documentaries for tv.In July 2009, Davies wrote a Guardian information story headlined “Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims”. Evans had not been in contact with Davies for some time, as a result of she had been overseas engaged on TV documentaries. She’d by no means heard of cellphone hacking, but it surely was a lightbulb second – so this was how the tabloids stole secrets and techniques. Two years earlier, in January 2007, the Information of the World’s royal correspondent Clive Goodman had been jailed for 4 months after pleading responsible to illegally intercepting cell phone messages involving members of the royal family; his co-conspirator, non-public investigator Glenn Mulcaire, was sentenced to 6 months. On the time, Information Worldwide (now Information UK), which printed the Information of the World, claimed that Goodman was a solitary rogue operator. Davies didn’t consider this, and was satisfied there was a lot extra to come back out.Evans’s documentary work had come to an finish, and she or he requested Davies if he had something to tide her over. He mentioned he wanted somebody “good at calling up strangers and persuading them to speak” – specifically “present and former Information of the World staff about using non-public investigators and some other darkish arts”, equivalent to “blagging” data from confidential databases and tapping dwell cellphone calls. Evans jumped at it. Davies didn’t know she had a vested curiosity.Progressively individuals started to speak, and what she found horrified her. She was advised tales about reporters despatched on “punishment” missions to chase fictitious tales arrange by editors to humiliate them. There was the reporter who was 5 months pregnant being ordered to get in a dinghy to search for a whale’s household, and one other being left together with a street dressed as a “hooker” in the dark. One supply alleged that he had seen editors pay police for tales, and that this had as soon as led to the suicide of somebody accused of a criminal offense. Though Information of the World editor Andy Coulson professed ignorance about cellphone hacking, “he was in it as much as his earlobes”, in line with one other supply.Non-public investigator Glenn Mulcaire arriving at court docket in London, August 2006. {Photograph}: Rex Options“The extra I came upon concerning the tabloids,” Evans says, “the extra fearful I turned, due to their attain, their energy, the corruption, the ruthlessness, the depth of the misogyny.”She was not having a lot luck getting potential victims of hacking to speak to her. So Davies recommended that she ought to encourage them to ask the Met straight in the event that they have been on the database of names obtained from non-public investigator Mulcaire’s materials. Few individuals knew the Met was obliged to provide them this data, and that those that discovered proof they could have been hacked may then sue the Information of the World and Mulcaire. Davies put collectively an inventory of names of doubtless victims – largely individuals who had been uncovered by the paper. On the backside of the listing was The Well-known Man. Davies nonetheless had no thought of Evans’s connection to him.There was no means she was going to strategy him, but it surely gave her an thought. She emailed New Scotland Yard and defined that she thought she might have been hacked by Mulcaire. Three months later, the Met responded, saying: “There may be some documentation in our possession to counsel that you might have been an individual of curiosity to Glenn Mulcaire.” Within the e book, Evans describes her response to receiving the e-mail with typical scatological brio. “Holy shitting fuck,” she writes.Evans obtained photocopies of the related bits of Mulcaire’s notebooks. Alongside her title he had written “Fragile”, and had received her date of start unsuitable. Subsequent to her title was that of her pal Rachel, with the proper handle and date of start. This was much more alarming. In any case, she was the pal to whom she had written a letter concerning the assault, the disclosure of which had resulted within the breakdown of her case and the double-page unfold within the Information of the World.She went into meltdown. Though this was the proof she had lengthy been searching for, she was petrified, not least as a result of she hadn’t advised Davies of her vested curiosity and now believed that it may undermine the integrity of his investigation. She couldn’t concentrate on work as a result of she was in items, and she or he was penniless. She invoiced Davies for a variety of shifts, and he received again to her asking why nothing appeared to have come from the work she’d executed in that point. That’s when all of it got here out. She advised him all the things. Evans says she anticipated a bollocking. When she had completed, Davies mentioned that he had skilled violence as a baby from any individual who ought to have protected him, and it had given him a lifelong hatred of bullies. “We should stand as much as the bullies, if we will, Jen,” he advised her. “We are able to stand as much as them collectively. Should you nonetheless really feel you’ll be able to.” Not solely was she relieved, she believed she had lastly discovered her reply: she should have been one in every of many individuals who had been hacked by Mulcaire, though she couldn’t keep in mind discussing the main points of her case on the cellphone. However even right here, she was disenchanted. She had not recognised the cellphone quantity Mulcaire had jotted beside her title, however thought that was as a result of she’d modified it so many instances. She rang the quantity to test it out. It turned out to be a unique Jenny Evans; Mulcaire was searching for her however discovered the unsuitable quantity.She lastly realised that there may solely be one reply to her unique query. Other than her and Rachel, solely the Metropolitan police knew concerning the existence of the letter during which she mentioned the assault. If Mulcaire had tried to hack into her cellphone, he had clearly fallen on the first hurdle. The Murdoch press may have solely received maintain of her story from the police.Individuals cowl their arses: they modify division names, they lose recordsdata, they scapegoat another person, and out of the blue it’s undiscoverableThe extra she came upon concerning the Murdoch press, the extra she had come to suppose that they have been in cahoots with the Met, if not controlling them. Within the investigation into the hacking scandal, it emerged that officers have been paid for data (which is illegal), and that senior officers continuously partied with and have been handled to freebies by Information Worldwide journalists.After Davies’s 2009 story concerning the payouts to hacking victims, the Met initially promised to overview all the fabric that the police had seized from Mulcaire when he was arrested in 2006 – six bin luggage containing 11,000 pages of notes from his dwelling. “We have been all anticipating that to take a very long time, however 24 hours later they got here again and mentioned, ‘We’ve reviewed all of it and there’s nothing to see right here,’” an incredulous Evans says.Why does she suppose the Met appeared so wanting to cowl up Information Worldwide’s legal exercise? Evans says there isn’t a easy reply, however she factors out that a variety of senior law enforcement officials have been having affairs that went on to be uncovered by rivals of the Solar and the Information of the World. It’s onerous to consider that Murdoch’s newspapers, so expert in exposing the key intercourse lives of the wealthy and highly effective, have been unaware of those relationships.Evans feels the true significance of the phone-hacking scandal has been downplayed as a result of it concerned celebrities. “It has landed in individuals’s consciousness as one thing to do with Hugh Grant’s voicemail. The breaches of privateness are horrible, but it surely’s really a police corruption story. They tried to cowl it up, to remain within the good books of the Murdoch press. When this was occurring, we have been speaking concerning the energy of Murdoch and the opposite tabloids, and now we’ve received the social media oligarchs who wield an identical quantity of energy. That’s why it’s nonetheless related.”It took the hacking of lacking schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s voicemail to rework a marginal story right into a nationwide scandal. The case was reported within the Guardian in July 2011, a month after serial killer Levi Bellfield had been convicted of her homicide. Sarcastically, on this event, the Information of the World might nicely have been hacking Dowler’s cellphone for noble causes – to attempt to monitor her down.The fallout from the phone-hacking scandal was large. In 2011, former Information of the World editor Andy Coulson resigned from his new job as spin physician to prime minister David Cameron, and 6 months later the 168-year-old newspaper, recognized to many as Information of the Screws, was closed down. The pinnacle of the Met, Paul Stephenson, resigned after it was revealed he had accepted a complimentary 20-night keep at luxurious well being spa Champneys over a five-week interval when recuperating from a knee operation. Champneys’ publicist was Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of the Information of the World, with whom Stephenson had dined eight instances between 2006 and 2010. His deputy John Yates additionally resigned. He blamed Information Worldwide for failing to inform him how widespread cellphone hacking was. In 2014, Coulson was jailed for 18 months after being discovered responsible of a cost of conspiracy to intercept voicemails.As for The Well-known Man, he additionally received his comeuppance. Though he by no means was placed on trial, his fame was nicely and really trashed after it was revealed that there had been a number of allegations in opposition to him.Did Evans really feel vindicated? “Sure, when the Information of the World closed I felt very emotional. I felt just like the bullies had been taken down. However even then, it was difficult. I had additionally met so many reporters who had labored for these newspapers and I preferred them, so I used to be conscious they have been being demonised. I felt for them.”She now knew at lot about the way in which the tabloids operated. However she nonetheless didn’t understand how that they had received her story. Evans wrote to the Met police’s directorate {of professional} requirements (DPS), saying: “I’ve come to the conclusion that somebody within the Met police both gave or – worse – offered my non-public data to the tabloids. And I wish to know the reality, please. So that I can transfer on.”The DPS produced its closing report in November 2013, two years later. The directorate upheld her grievance, however successfully cleared the Met within the course of. It concluded that there had been one leak by a press officer to “journalist sources” concerning the police station that The Well-known Man had been taken to, however there was no proof that Evans’s letter to Rachel had been leaked by the police. The report mentioned that the press officer had been suspended, that he had since died and that his recordsdata had been misplaced. It recommended that the truth that the Information of the World article didn’t point out the letter was proof that the letter had not been leaked, and didn’t try to elucidate how the paper had received maintain of her data.Evans Googled the lifeless press officer. He had been suspended months earlier than the Information of the World article about her was printed.She wasn’t executed but. Evans then took her case to the Impartial Police Complaints Fee (now rebranded because the Impartial Workplace for Police Conduct), whose remit was to guage whether or not the Met had carried out a ample investigation into itself. The IPCC, which was largely staffed by former officers, concluded it had.And nonetheless she wasn’t executed. Evans was decided to get an apology. So she approached the lawyer Tamsin Allen, and requested if she may see a means ahead. “I went to Tamsin and mentioned, ‘Certainly that is unsuitable, certainly this isn’t OK?’” Allen agreed along with her and mentioned she thought Evans may make a declare for damages in opposition to the Met for freely giving or promoting her secrets and techniques to the Murdoch press. Evans was impressed by Allen’s need to struggle for justice. Allen advised her: “It’s massively satisfying to symbolize a person in opposition to a monolith.” This struck a chord.Jenny Evans at her dwelling in Bristol along with her canine, Woody, June 2025. Portrait: Josh Adam Jones/The Guardian. Assistant: Kaya OatleyWhen Evans opened the letter she acquired from the Met in 2014, she discovered herself “crying and laughing concurrently”. She had lastly received an apology for “the passing of data to the media” and “for the misery prompted”, however once more the Met blamed the lifeless press officer.Ultimately, she by no means did get a passable reply to the query that took her into journalism – how did the main points she had revealed to the police discover their means into the Information of the World? However alongside the way in which she had helped Davies expose the darkish arts of the Murdoch press, and produce down main figures in Information Worldwide and the Metropolitan police. She additionally acquired a life-changing settlement from the Met alongside the apology. It paid for IVF therapy, and after 5 rounds and eight embryo transfers, she gave start to her son, Leo, who’s now six. Allen then took on the newspapers on Evans’s behalf, a variety of which paid her damages, though none admitted legal responsibility.After working efficiently as a documentary maker for 20 years (directing and producing movies about refugees and asylum seekers, homelessness and, after all, cellphone hacking), she determined it was time for a profession change in 2020. Impressed by Allen, she used a part of her payout from the newspapers to retrain as a lawyer. Now she has certified and is searching for her first job.I ask if she has reached closure. Not by her dealings with the police, she says. “I used to be conscious by the top that I wouldn’t get the title of the individual accountable as a result of that’s how corruption works. Individuals simply cowl their arses: they modify division names, they lose recordsdata, they scapegoat another person, and out of the blue it’s undiscoverable. However on one degree the e book is my closure. It’s pulling collectively all of the analysis, all the things I found, and saying, ‘Take a look at this, it’s not OK, is it?’”That appears to be your motto, I say. Evans nods and grins. She glances down at her “Fuck it” necklace. “I suppose I’m going to vary my necklace to ‘This isn’t OK’.” Don’t Let It Break You: A Memoir About Saving Your self by Jenny Evans is printed by Robinson (£22). To help the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Supply prices might apply.