Catherine's parents thought they had done everything right. She was 11 in 1982 when a teacher at her primary school in west Dublin sexually abused her. She told her mother, who told her father, Brendan, and he went to the gardai, who told him to go to the school principal.
The principal was sceptical. Catherine refused to go back to school, and gave him the names of four other girls this teacher had abused.
Brendan told the principal he was going to the Garda. This time the principal asked for 24 hours, and later that day called to Brendan's house to tell him the teacher had left the school without any admission of guilt.
Brendan did not know that the principal had caught the teacher abusing a child in the toilets that day.
No counselling was available for Catherine and the local GP was dismissive of the problem, but the experience did not leave her. As the years passed other former pupils revealed abuse by the teacher, and in December 1997, when Catherine was home on holiday, she rang the Department of Education and said she wanted to contact the teacher, leaving her phone number. He phoned the next day.
This proved what they had suspected - he was still teaching. "It meant he was an active paedophile," said Brendan.
The following May he and his wife contacted the gardai and said a man they believed to be a serial paedophile was teaching. They contacted another girl he had abused, and she and Catherine decided to go forward together to give evidence against him.
"They wanted to give each other moral support," said Brendan. "Neither of them would have gone alone." Then three more girls came forward. There was one charge of rape and four of indecent assault.
When the first trial came up in February 1999 the man succeeded in getting the rape charge separated from the other four. Then a newspaper article was judged to be prejudicial, and the case was aborted, and put back to November. When the case came up the judge separated the four other cases, citing a judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal. This meant that each of the girls had to go forward alone as a witness, and they could not corroborate each other's stories. Catherine was the first witness.
"His defence counsel put her through the wringer," said Brendan, still angry at what happened. "He asked her did she enjoy it, and kept asking her who she had told, and would not let her say she had told her mother." The jury acquitted the abuser.
The next case was stopped and put back because the accused knew two members of the jury. Then the third case came on. The abuser was found guilty and sentenced to two concurrent four-year sentences. The rescheduled second case came up last May, and again he was found guilty, and is awaiting sentencing. Other cases are pending against him, including some from other schools.
Despite the fact that the man has been apprehended and jailed, Catherine still does not feel free of what happened. "Because of what happened in court she feels she has been branded a liar," said Brendan.
"The system of separating cases is fundamentally wrong. No girls will go forward. These two girls, even though he was found guilty, would not go through it again."
Barrister Ms Mary Ellen Ring agrees that the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal can make the trial more difficult for victims. It arose from the conviction of a Trudder House employee accused of molesting two children, and requires that allegations by different people against the same person must be dealt with separately. She said the court decided that if such cases were heard together, the strengths of one case would be used to bolster the weaknesses of another. Brendan is not seeking revenge. "That man does not need a prison sentence. He's a nut-case. He needs psychiatric treatment."
