The decision taken by Ms Sophia McColgan to get her degree before dealing with her father's sexual abuse was not a rational decision, but was the product of a "thinking error" according to an expert in child sex abuse.
Dr Suzanne Sgroi said the appropriate response would have been to preserve her life by leaving the home of her father, "a seriously disturbed individual who was threatening not only their safety but their lives".
The US expert was giving her opinion on Ms McColgan's state of mind in the years 1988 and 1991. The defendants - the health board and a GP - are claiming that under the Statute of Limitations Ms McColgan should have taken action within three years of turning 18 in 1988. Her lawyers are arguing that she was in no mental state to do so.
In her evidence, Ms McColgan had said she believed going to college and getting a degree would empower her to protect herself and her family against their father, disclose his abuse and bring him to justice. This was a rational decision, the defence argued. Her capacity to make it and to take her degree showed she was mentally capable of taking legal action within the statutory time limit, had she chosen to do so.
On Thursday, a psychiatrist, Prof Ivor Browne, told the court a person could function apparently normally in one area of his or her life, while shutting off whole other areas. He described this as the phenomenon of "dissociation", and that in the "dissociated" areas, Ms McColgan was of unsound mind. She was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.
Dr Sgroi, who has more than 20 years experience in the area of child sex abuse, said it was common among victims of severe combined physical and sexual abuse to suffer severe psychological injury. This took various forms, including "pathological dissociation". While the dissociation was used as a coping mechanism to cut them off from a traumatic event, it very much cut them off from information about ordinary life events.
Dr Sgroi also said victims of severe combined abuse often suffered from significant cognitive distortions, which she described as "thinking errors", having an idea about the world which was not true.
She said Ms McColgan's obsession with the idea that getting a degree was the way to deal with her father's abuse was an example of such an error.
In cross-examination by Mr John Rogers SC, for the health board, Dr Sgroi was asked about the general level of knowledge of the assessment and treatment of child sex abuse in the early 1980s and if there was not a real danger of "applying our current knowledge and standards to what happened 15 and more years ago".