I've known Mary Murphy (not her real name) for about two years now. I think by this stage we are good friends. She's 24 and lives with her husband and four children on one of Dublin's biggest housing estates.
I met her after she'd phoned and asked me to come to Dublin and talk to her about the fact that she had been regularly raped by her mother's boyfriend from the time she was 12 until she'd turned 14. She wanted the man who'd done this brought to trial but had despaired of him ever being charged.
We met in Bewley's in Westmoreland Street and talked - well, she talked, I listened - for hours. The conversation had mostly to do with the possibility of bringing a private prosecution. I said I'd do what I could to help.
In fact, for all sorts of reasons but mostly because it's a dauntingly complex and difficult thing to do, we aren't much further forward. Still, Mary hasn't given up hope or determination. If you met her for the first time you'd say she was obsessed. When you know her, it's a wonder she's able to operate in the world at all.
She says that during the period of more than two years when she was being raped she made "dozens" of statements to gardaí and social workers detailing the times, places and circumstances of it happening. She says that after she left home, the man "moved on" successively to her two next-oldest sisters, raping them both, and later seriously sexually assaulted the fourth girl in the family.
Gardaí have twice sent files on her case to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who on both occasions declined to prosecute.
A shining bright and physically fragile woman, she comes from a small town in the Midlands. She says she is still deeply troubled by her experiences, and doesn't expect ever completely to recover. She knows that some gardaí and others aware of the details of the case believe she would make an unreliable witness, and that this has been a major obstacle to mounting a prosecution.
She agrees that she withdrew a number of statements shortly after making them, and that at different times over the years she has given contradictory accounts of one key incident. But she says she has explanations for this, and wants the explanations put to a jury.
Her early memories are of a family in deep poverty and constant turmoil. The man who she says raped her moved in with her mother in 1985. Her father was in a mental hospital at the time. She was the eldest in a family of five girls then living in a mobile home at the back of a relative's house.
She says that some weeks after he moved in, she and the man were walking along a road towards his grandmother's house when he dragged her into a graveyard and raped her. She says that she was terrified and bewildered and tried to fight him off but couldn't. Next day, she told her mother, who expressed outrage and sent for gardaí.
She says she gave a detailed account of the incident to gardaí, but that after the guards left, her mother "turned on" her, struck her and told her "It's all your fault". She says her mother ordered her to tell the guards she had been lying, and the following day refused to allow gardaí and a social worker to take her to the Rotunda in Dublin for tests. She told gardaí she was retracting her statement.
On her account, this established a pattern which was to become standard in the months ahead, of the man raping her approximately on a weekly basis, her mother sometimes calling gardaí and encouraging her to make a formal complaint, then demanding that she withdraw the statement, sometimes beating her, occasionally warning that she and her sisters would be "taken away" and never see each other again if she didn't.
She says she was was raped in her own bed, on sofas, in outhouses, on floors in relatives' homes.
The incident of which she gave irreconcilable accounts happened in early 1988 after the christening of her half-sister, the first child born to her mother and the alleged rapist. In the version she gave at the time, she said she had been raped by the man and also by his cousin who had just acted as sponsor at the baptism.
But in a statement five years later, she made no reference to a second rapist.
Shortly after this incident, she was taken from the family home by a social worker and brought to a hostel run by nuns near Dublin city centre. She remains unclear about the legal basis of this initiative. Within weeks, she had run away from the hostel to live rough and in squats around Dublin. She says she occasionally telephoned her two oldest sisters and became aware that the man had transferred his attentions to them.
The statement omitting reference to being raped by the baptismal sponsor was made in 1993, when her third-oldest sister, then 11, arrived in Dublin seeking refuge from the man, who had now begun to abuse her in turn.
Mary, now with a settled address and living with the man she was later to marry, took her sister to a garda station. They were referred to the Sex Abuse Unit at Temple Street Children's Hospital, where social workers video-taped separate interviews with them.
She says: "My statement was to back up my sister's story, to get a court order to keep her safe from our mother's boyfriend. When I came to the christening, the social worker in charge told me to leave out the other man, it only complicated things. So I did."
She says that two other social workers, a child psychiatrist and a ban-garda were present when this advice was given, and that none demurred. The statements taken at Temple Street formed the basis of a successful application by the South Eastern Health Board in early 1994 for the youngest sister to be taken into care.
Ms. Murphy says that the visit of her sister stirred her to try to revive her own case. She travelled to a garda station in her home area, and dictated another statement. In this, too, mindful of the advice given at Temple Street - and, ironically, concerned that she not appear inconsistent - she omitted mention of the second rapist at the christening.
This statement was included in a file then submitted by gardaí to the DPP but rejected as a basis for prosecution.
The christening incident was crucial because it could be located exactly in time and place, and details, including the presence of the alleged rapists and the fact that she had complained in the immediate aftermath, could be confirmed by witnesses. This was not true of any of the other incidents, many of which, she says, are "muddled up" in her memory.
In October last year, gardaí in her home area were made aware that Ms. Murphy was now investigating the possibility of bringing a private prosecution, and they offered to submit the case again to the DPP. She made yet another statement, this time mentioning the alleged second rapist during the christening party. This statement was included along with the statement of 1993 in the file sent to the DPP.
Three months ago, Ms. Murphy was informed that the DPP had again turned the case down. Solicitors have advised her that the obvious contradiction between the 1993 and 1997 versions of the key incident would, on its own, have fatally undermined the case.
Says Ms. Murphy: "Surely part of the case would be to explain how the contradiction came about. It's not a mystery."
Solicitors for Ms. Murphy have now written to her local Health Board asking for all relevant files and statements held by them. They have also asked for the records of the Temple Street interviews. She is anxious to press ahead again.
She says: "Guards and lawyers keep telling me my case is very complicated, but it's not. I don't believe it has ever been taken seriously. This man raped and terrorised me and then did the same to my sisters. And yet when I go down home, he's able to jeer at me and abuse me in the public street."
Whether she can ever bring her project to fruition remains to be seen. She is sharply focussed and not lacking in tenacity. But there has never been a private prosecution for rape in the history of the State, and private prosecutions, generally, are extremely rare. There is no body of specialist expertise in the Law Library to turn to.
There is also no precedent for the successful private prosecution of a case twice turned down by the DPP.
But Ms. Murphy is undeterred. The sister who fled to Dublin in 1993 and was removed from the family home the following year is now back living with her mother. The man Ms. Murphy says is a multiple rapist is a frequent visitor to the house. n