‘You raped me... you took my humanity. You took my dignity’

Chef-Boutonne is a small, picturesque town in southwest France with a population of just over 2,000 people. The sleepy nature of the locality attracted former Fine Gael Senator Niamh Cosgrave to holiday in the area and eventually led her to move there with her family in 2007. Ms Cosgrave could have never imagined the sexual violence she would experience in her new home.

"This is a town where they rear your children with you," she told Today with Sean O'Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1. "It's a safe environment. They come home dirty and hungry when they're ready.

“Doors are open all the time, you don’t knock, even if you go to the shop, you don’t get a smile, you get a kiss.”

Ms Cosgrave had previously tested positive for the Hepatitis-C virus after receiving a blood transfusion during the birth of her child in the 1970s. In the mid-1990s she played an important role in the call for compensation for women who had contracted the disease from the Anti-D blood product.

She left Ireland after her marriage broke down and quickly settled into life in Chef-Boutonne. Like others, she left her door unlocked at night. She was not worried when she awoke to a tap on her shoulder on the night on September 4th, 2012.

“I immediately assumed it was the dog so I didn’t panic,” she remembers. When she felt a hand push down her head she assumed it was a child who had come to rob her home.

“Then he made some gestures that led me to believe that yes I was in serious trouble here.”

Ms Cosgrave tried to talk to man out of raping her and asked if she could use the toilet. He followed her down the corridor and when she tried to escape through the kitchen, he punched her in the face and broke her jaw.

She described the pain as “absolutely horrific” and tried to run but the man grabbed her by her hair and threw her to the ground.

“I was fighting, fighting, fighting because I knew if I went back down that corridor I wasn’t going to come out of it alive.”

The man dragged her back to the bedroom where she says he raped her repeatedly.

“People think of rape as just being a sexual act but the amount of violence was horrific. In fact, it got so bad that I no longer felt any pain and I divided in two, it was like I was looking at a horror film.”

As he raped her, Ms Cosgrave could see a photo of her children sitting on the bedside locker. She tried to turn the photograph away but the man told her not to bother, that she’d never see them again.

“I know it sounds strange but I felt they were in the room with me and they were looking, I felt their presence in the room and I felt humiliated and I felt disgusted,” she says.

Ms Cosgrave says the man raped her for nearly two-and-half hours. She says she just lay there and pretended to be dead.

When he finally left she was petrified he’d return with a knife to kill her.

“I knew I was going to die, that’s exactly how I felt... I honestly did not think that he could leave that house without killing me.”

Somehow, she managed to call the police. She was taken to hospital by ambulance where she spent three weeks.

Police had warned her not to return home before the accused man was arrested.

Ms Cosgrave says she was too humiliated to call a friend for help. “I felt filthy, I wasn’t ready to tell anybody, so they suggested I stay in a psychiatric ward. I said I’m not crazy, I’ve just been raped.”

Christian Gladieux, a local married man who Ms Cosgrave believes saw her at the Red Cross food bank where she volunteered, admitted to raping Ms Cosgrave and was arrested three weeks later. Gladieux had previously spent 10 years in jail for breaking into a neighbour's home and repeatedly raping her. He had also been found guilty of sexually assaulting his niece, who was a minor.

Ms Cosgrave says the majority of people in the town have been very supportive. Under the French health system, she receives free counselling services to deal with post-traumatic stress and panic attacks.

“The French system, the way they have taken care of me, has been absolutely marvellous. My only complaint would be that it took two and half years to get to court.”

Ms Cosgrave also contatced the Rape Crisis Centre, where she could hear an Irish accent and just “talk, talk, talk.”

She put her house in Chef-Boutonne up for sale but opted to stay in the town because of the “wonderful support network”.

The case came to trial in February 2015. During her testimonial, Ms Cosgrave told Gladieux: “you came into my home, you raped me, you beat me up and you terrorised me. But when you left my home you walked away with my dignity and my humanity.”

Christian Gladieux was sentenced to 18 years in jail.

The judge described Ms Cosgrave as “a woman of courage” and Gladieux’s defence lawyer also commended her for her courage and dignity

Before she faced Gladieux in court, Ms Cosgrave says she felt she was hiding “a dirty little secret”.

“I felt that rape was a dirty little secret and that’s what an awful lot of victims I think feel. They feel humiliated and they live in fear and in secrecy and their lives are destroyed.”

Even though her attacker is behind bars, Ms Cosgrave says she will never be able to forget the brutality she experienced that night.

“My counsellor said to me, I will never forget it but I will learn to live with it and when I saw him in handcuffs I realised, yes, I can learn to live with it.”