The attack on Maureen Kearney was as brutal as it was unexpected. The Irish mother of two was cleaning her teeth one morning in 2012 in her home outside Paris when an intruder burst in. Cut with a knife and raped, she was left blindfolded and tied to a chair, where she was found only hours later by her shocked cleaning lady.
What followed was almost as horrific: for the next few years she was embroiled in a French legal hell that saw her accused and convicted of having orchestrated the attack on herself, before only finally being cleared on appeal in 2018.
This was no ordinary crime, however: Kearney was an outspoken trade unionist waging a high-profile campaign to blow the whistle on a