First details of horrific abuse emerged 10 years ago

On December 16th, 1995, the first details appeared in The Irish Times of the horrific south Dublin incest and infanticide case that has grabbed the headlines again in recent days.

Back then the woman at the centre of the allegations graphically detailed the years of abuse to which she had been subjected as a child. She recalled how her mother had tied her hands behind her back so it would be easier for her brother to rape.

In other parts of the page-long interview, she recalled being sent upstairs by her mother with her Christmas dinner "knowing I was going to be raped and buggered by my father".

Her childhood was one filled with violence, much of it sexual and at the hands of her father and brothers. Her mother did nothing to stop it and in some ways assisted the abuse.

"My first recollection is of a baby kicking me in the classroom . . . I didn't want to ask anyone what was happening to me. I felt there was something wrong and I knew I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I remember at that time being in the bedroom in the dark on my own and my mother telling me I was a freak and I was going to have a deformed baby.

"I remember the night the baby was born. It was the 4th of April 1973. I remember I was in the front bedroom in the house. I was on the floor in the corner. I felt really sick and my tummy was hurting me. I was crying.

"My father was in the double bed. My brother came into the room. He came over and started stamping on my leg. He said, 'That's not my baby, that's not my baby'. He said, 'If you tell anyone that's my baby, I'll kill you'."

She then delivered the baby girl. "My father came back into the room with a pair of scissors and a knitting needle, both in one hand. My mum and dad argued about it and finally my mum said to my dad, 'If you don't do it, I'll do it'. . .

"My mother took the knitting needle from my dad and started to stab the baby with the needle around the chest and more to the face of the baby."

The child was dumped in a lane in Dún Laoghaire. It was found by two boys, one of whom was Uinsionn Mac Dubhghaill. He later became an Irish Times journalist, to whom the woman told her story in 1995.