A jury at Dublin County Coroner's court has found that an infant found stabbed to death in a laneway in Dún Laoghaire, south Dublin, 34 years ago belongs to Cynthia Owen.
Cynthia Owen
After four days of emotionally charged testimony at the Dublin County Coroner's Court the jury returned an open verdict into the infant's death and named the family home at White's Villas in Dalkey as the place of death on 4 April 1973.
The jury's decision was unanimous.
Ms Owen who claimed the child was conceived as a result of incest, broke down when the verdict was read by the chairman of the jury.
Speaking after the verdict was delivered, Ms Owen spoke of her relief that her baby had been recognised after more than 30 years.
"I am enormously relieved at the verdict the jury has returned today which fully vindicates me and which attributes formal recognition to my infant Noleen who was stabbed to death in my parents' home," she said.
A composed Ms Owen went on: "I cannot understand how the authorities at the time never intervened, as they must have known - and I can categorically say that some of those in authority did know - about the abuse.
"A transcript of the evidence given at this inquest is now publicly accessible and I suggest that its contents should give great cause for concern that the authorities stood idly by during those terrifying years of my pre-teen and early teenage life.
"This calls for a satisfactory explanation and I would ask the Minister for Justice to act promptly to have it investigated."
Thanking the Dr Kieran Geraghty and the jury, Ms Owen concluded; "Now, at last, they have formally given my daughter Noleen back her name and I can begin to live the rest of my life."
Ms Owen detailed years of ritual abuse meted out to children in the family home during the inquest.
However, despite claims and counter-claims over four days of traumatic evidence questions remain about the death of Noleen.
Ms Owen wants to know what happened to the evidence in what was evidently a murder case; why no blood group or tissue samples were kept and what happened to the bag and sanitary towels found with the baby.
Ms Owen insists gardai did not carry out an adequate investigation.
Psychologists supported her evidence but Ms Owen was forced to sit in the court room as her abuse claims were refuted.
In all, Ms Owen claims she was raped as a child by a circle of at least nine men, some of them visitors to the family home.