Raynor Winn hits back at claims she misled readers

Author Raynor Winn has hit back at a newspaper investigation that claimed she gave misleading information about her life story in her 2018 book The Salt Path.

The Observer reported she had misrepresented the events that led to she and her husband losing their house and setting off on a 630-mile walk. The investigation also cast doubt over the nature of her husband’s illness. Winn denied the allegations and said she was taking legal advice.

In a lengthy statement posted on her website on Wednesday, Winn responded in detail to the claims made in the Observer.

She provided documents that appeared to confirm her husband Moth had previously been diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration (CBD).

She also stood by her description of how the couple came to lose their house and denied the couple had any outstanding debts.

However, Winn acknowledged making “mistakes” earlier in her career, after the Observer said she had defrauded her previous employer of £64,000. She said it had been a pressured time.

“Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry,” she said, but added the case had been settled between her and her ex-employer on a “non-admissions basis” and although she was questioned by the police, she was not charged.

BBC News has contacted the journalist who wrote the Observer article for a response.

• The Observer said it had spoken to several medical experts who were sceptical about Moth having CBD, also known as CBS, given his long survival after diagnosis, lack of acute symptoms and his apparent ability to reverse them.

Winn shared photographs of documents that appeared to show medical experts acknowledging or referring to Moth’s condition or symptoms.

One letter appears to show that Moth had previously been considered as having an “atypical form of corticobasal degeneration”, but further examination suggested he may have “an even more unusual disorder, perhaps monogenetic”.

Winn said a CBS diagnosis does not come from a simple test, “but rather from a long and complex route of observation, where sufferers may have symptoms for many years before they finally reach a diagnosis”.

She added: “We will always be grateful that Moth’s version of CBS is indolent, its slow progression has allowed us time to discover how walking helps him.”

Winn said she had documented Moth’s illness “with such a level of honesty, that this is the most unbearable of the allegations”, adding: “My books have become a record of his health.”

The Salt Path described how Moth’s condition appeared to improve during and after the walk. But in her statement, Winn said: “I have never sought to offer medical advice in my books or suggest that walking might be some sort of miracle cure for CBS, I am simply charting Moth’s own personal journey and battle with his illness, and what has helped him.”

• The Observer said the couple had not lost their home in a bad business deal as Winn originally suggested, but after they were unable to repay £100,000 they had borrowed to repay money she had been accused of stealing from a previous employer

Winn acknowledged a dispute with her previous employer but said that was separate to the court case described in The Salt Path involving their friend, whom she had referred to as Cooper, which ultimately lost the couple their home.

Reiterating the events described in the book, Winn said Moth made an investment in Cooper’s property portfolio, and when the investment was due to mature, Cooper said it had failed due to low occupancy.

Winn said Cooper promised to eventually pay the money back, and the couple asked for it to be returned in 2008. Instead, she said, Cooper offered them a loan through his company, assured against their home, with 18% interest, which he said he would cover.

But Winn said his company later went into liquidation without the charge on their home having been removed. As a result, the author said, their house was repossessed.

• The Observer alleged Winn had stolen £64,000 from her previous employer’s while she was working there.

Winn acknowledged working for the employer before the economic crash of 2008, saying it was a “pressured time”.

“It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry,” she said.

Winn said her employer had gone to the police, accusing her of taking money from the company. “I was questioned, I was not charged, nor did I face criminal sanctions,” she said.

“I reached a settlement… because I did not have the evidence required to support what happened. The terms of the settlement were willingly agreed by both parties.”

She said her employer was equally keen to reach a private resolution as she was, and the money she paid was on a “non-admissions basis”.

• The Observer said the couple owned property in the south-west of France, but added it was not in a habitable state and reported locals saying the couple only camped on the land when they visited

Winn said: “What we own in France is an uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch, on the boundary of a family member’s property.

“It has missing walls, a collapsed roof, no running water, drainage, or electricity… We have never lived there, that would be impossible, and we haven’t been there since 2007.”

She said the insinuation that the pair were not homeless, the central premise of the book, was “utterly unfounded”.

Winn said the couple did try to sell the land in 2013, around the same time as events depicted in the book, “but the local agent said it was virtually worthless and saw no point in marketing it”.

Elsewhere in the statement, Winn disputed any suggestion that the couple had outstanding debts, and said a credit check would have proved this.

She said after receiving an advance for the book and over the subsequent years “I tracked down our remaining debts and now believe I have tracked down and repaid everyone”.

Winn also explained why she and Moth are not known by their legal names of Timothy and Sally Walker.

The author said Winn was her maiden name, and she disliked her first name of Sally and decided to use her family name Raynor as a pen name. She also noted Moth was short for Timothy.

She denied the couple were “hiding behind pseudonyms” and said their friends use “Sal and Tim interchangeably with Ray and Moth”.