THE woman whose abuser had a five year jail sentence reduced to six months has told of years of beatings from her mother after she revealed abuse when she was six years old.
She has also told The Irish Times of enduring a nightmare of rape from the age of 12.
Angry at how the legal system dealt with her case, she has called for legal representation for abuse victims from an early stage in the proceedings.
"How would judges and barristers feel if it was their daughters or granddaughters who had been abused for years and whose abusers ended up with a six month sentence?" she asked.
Last week, in the Court of Criminal Appeal, her uncle had his five year prison sentence reduced to six months partly on the grounds that he would have got a lighter sentence had he been tried at the time the offences occurred.
The decision was criticised by the Progressive Democrats and by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, which announced that it would launch a new campaign after Christmas for legal representation for rape victims.
The woman, who is from a town in the south east, told The Irish Times that her uncle began to take her into the fields to abuse her when she was aged six and he was 14. When she revealed the abuse, her mother spoke to her uncle and it stopped but, "from that day on my mother started beating me. My life became hell".
When her uncle, her mother's brother, began to rape her at the age of 12, she was afraid to tell anybody because she feared she would be blamed. Many of the rapes happened in her bedroom when her mother and her uncle's girlfriend were downstairs. Over the years she was raped, buggered and orally assaulted.
She believes her mother must have known that her uncle was doing something to her. When she went to the gardai last year, her mother and the rest of her family broke off contact with her.
She praised the gardai. But she was distressed when the Director of Public Prosecutions decided her uncle should be charged with indecent assault rather than rape.
She says she went into shock when she heard that her uncle had had his sentence reduced to six months in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
She says she hopes the case may lead to changes in the legal system, including a right to legal representation for abuse victims from the time they make a statement.