Attack On 6 March 1986, a gang of burglars broke into the Saward family's home at lunchtime. Jill's father and her then-boyfriend, David Kerr, were tied up and beaten, both suffering fractured skulls, while she was raped. The incident received considerable international media coverage because the house was identified as that of the vicar of Ealing, and the attack was soon labelled by the media as the "Ealing vicarage rape". Saward was effectively identified as the victim of the attack by photographs published in
The Sun four days later. The leader of the three men, Robert Horscroft, who was not involved in the rape, received 14 years' imprisonment for burglary and assault. Martin McCall, the more violent of the two attackers, was sentenced to five years for rape and five years for aggravated burglary, while Christopher Byrne received three years for rape and five years for burglary and assault. Saward too complained about the sentences; in 1988, as a result of the case, a new law was passed that allowed appeals against
unduly lenient sentences, and also closed a loophole that had previously only granted rape victims anonymity after a suspect was charged with the offence. On his retirement in 1993, Leonard publicly apologised to Saward,
Subsequent developments Four days after the incident,
The Sun published a photograph of Saward with just her eyes blacked out, as well as an image of her home on its front page, jeopardising her anonymity. The newspaper's editor,
Kelvin MacKenzie, said he printed the images because a rape victim only earned the right to anonymity once a suspect had been charged with the offence. This led to the
Press Council amending its guidelines and the closure of that legal loophole. In 1990, with the help of friend Wendy Green, Saward wrote a
memoir about her experiences, called
Rape: My Story (1990). At the same time she featured in an
Everyman programme for the
BBC with
Jenni Murray. In doing so, she became the first British rape victim to waive her right to anonymity. In 1998, Saward met Horscroft, who was the leader of the gang but who had not been involved in the rape, and reportedly forgave him for his role in the crime. Horscroft had been freed in 1996; he died in 2012. Saward told Elizabeth Grice in an interview for
The Daily Telegraph in 2006: "Of course, sometimes I thought it might be quite nice to be full of hatred and revenge. But I think it creates a barrier and you're the one who gets damaged in the end. So, although it makes you vulnerable, forgiving is actually a release. I don't think I'd be here today without my Christian faith. That's what got me through". ==Campaigning work==