What’s it like raising two boys when their father is wanted by the US? The partner of the WikiLeaks founder tells her story
Imagine meeting the love of your life but not being able to tell a soul. Then having his children, and not being able to confide in your closest friends who the father is because it may endanger the family. And finally revealing all to the world – but only to help prevent him being extradited from Belmarsh prison in London to America where he faces a jail sentence of up to 175 years under the Espionage Act.
Stella Moris has had a tough time of it. Her face is pale, her voice little more than a whisper, and she barely makes eye contact. The pauses between words are sometimes so long, you fear she’s having a breakdown mid-sentence. And yet there is such defiance in her language, such certainty in the rightness of her cause. A defiance and certainty not unlike that shown by her fiance, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the world’s most famous publisher of classified information. Now she is fighting for his life and her future. And that’s not all. In a couple of weeks at the Royal Courts of Justice, the US government will appeal against an earlier decision not to send Assange to America. If Assange loses, Moris believes the very concept of a free press will be under threat.
