Rape victim 'shocked' to learn of intervention

The 23-year-old rape victim at the centre of the current controversy has said she was "shocked" to learn of Mr Molloy's intervention in her case. "Why did Bobby Molloy come into the story?" she asked yesterday.

If Mr Molloy had intervened, as had been reported, she could not understand why he did so, she told RTÉ News.

The woman said she was surprised and happy at the outcome of her case, in which her father, Patrick Naughton, from Camus, Connemara, was jailed for 11 years for persistently raping her over a 10-year period.

The abuse began in 1987, when she was nine years of age, and continued until 1993. In 1997, when she was 18, her father raped her again.

She described the "unbelieveable" threats made by her father during this time to stop her from revealing the abuse to the gardaí. "I'll put a block around your stomach and make sure I'll throw you out in the lake," he told her on one occasion.

Although she had thought of telling someone on many occasions, she desisted because "the threats that were made were just as bad as the abuse". However, five years ago, her father raped her one final time, and tried to choke her to death. The woman then went to the gardaí and told her story.

"I promised myself that night that if I survived it I would come forward. Thank God, justice was done," she said yesterday.