Monica Coghlan (3 April 1951 – 27 April 2001) was an English woman at the centre of a scandal that involved British Conservative politician Jeffrey Archer in 1987. Although he won a libel case against the Daily Star newspaper, which had alleged that he had paid her for sex, it was later established, in legal proceedings in 2001, that he had perjury himself in the trial. Archer was jailed for this in July 2001, receiving a four-year sentence. Coghlan died in a car crash shortly before the second trial began, without having the chance to face him in court before his subsequent conviction.
She became pregnant, and for a short time retired from prostitution, returning to live in Rochdale to raise her son, Robin Daley Coghlan (born 1984, Rochdale). When her boyfriend died unexpectedly, she returned to prostitution, leading a double life "to secure the boy's future"; she cared for the toddler during the week, then left him with friends or relatives at weekends, to commute by train to London to work.
During the trial, Coghlan broke down in tears repeatedly on cross-examination, but continued to assert the truth of the newspaper's story, dramatically calling Archer a liar in court. In other testimony she stated that she enjoyed her job as a prostitute, and defended her work with married clients, saying that "Half the time it keeps marriages together." She regretted that she could not go back to work after the trial. "Jeffrey Archer took everything away from me," she would later say. "I lost my home, my dignity, my self-respect, and any hope of a future."
On 26 April 2001, drug addict Gary Day crashed a stolen Jaguar S-Type into Coghlan's Ford Fiesta outside Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Day, 32, had robbed a pharmacy for drugs, then hijacked two cars using a fake pistol: first a Peugeot taxi, which he crashed into a parked Land Rover, then the Jaguar from a motorist who had stopped at the first crash scene to help. Coghlan's car was catapulted through a wall. She lay in the wreck for an hour, and had to be cut out of the wreckage through the car roof. She died from her injuries the next day in a hospital in Leeds, aged 50. Day admitted manslaughter, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on 6 July 2001. "Coghlan killer is jailed for life" by Martin Wainwright, 7 July 2001, The Guardian
Following her death and Archer's conviction for perjury, on 20 July 2001 the English Collective of Prostitutes wrote an open letter to The Guardian newspaper supporting her vindication, and calling her unjustly "branded by her sex, race and class and by the prostitution laws which label and condemn women."English Collective of Prostitutes letter, All Women Count Global Women's Strike
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