That you were seen as easy prey, the daughter of a single parent, and were drugged and sexually assaulted many times or that the man who was convicted for these crimes has now been released from prison.Īll of these are just episodes in the life of Allison Bailey, a formidable barrister who is suing both Stonewall and her chambers, Garden Court (a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme) for their treatment of her. It cannot be easy to disclose as an adult the sexual abuse that happened to you as a nine-year-old. It cannot be easy, after a lifetime of supporting radical causes and becoming a criminal barrister, to find that at your workplace there are complaints about you orchestrated by a group set up originally to protect gay rights: Stonewall. Section 28, which was implemented in 1988, left gay teenagers with little support.
It cannot have been easy to be a black woman of Jamaican heritage in the late 1980s, living in Oxford and realising you were a lesbian.
