Christa Johnson speaks resolutely about the battle with her American father which has involved leading politicians from here and the United States, police and lawyers in several jurisdictions and numerous legal actions.
Sometimes it is like a "curse", other times it is an "overhanging cloud", but her campaign to get justice has now become seared into her personality, she said.
The latest development in this campaign has made headline news on television networks in Phoenix, Arizona, over the last fortnight after she shrieked at a local judge for dismissing a child abuse case against her father.
Ms Johnson, a third year philosophy student at Trinity College, was visibly shocked when Maricopa county Judge, Mr David Talamante, told her everything she said about the abuse was true, but because she was "a remarkably well-adjusted young woman", he was going to dismiss the case for damages against her father.
As Judge Talamante left the bench, Ms Johnson rushed across the room and shouted at him, "What if it happened to you?" The judge looked shaken and turned his back, but before he disappeared out the door, the woman added, "If after 20 years she heals, it's OK then?"
It was the latest and most publicly charged episode in a poisonous family break-up which started back in 1983 when Ms Johnson and her mother, Laraine, boarded a plane for Switzerland.
Laraine was running from an acrimonious divorce settlement with the father, Mr David Pankratz, while her daughter says she was escaping the clutches of a habitual child molester who had abused her over a two-year period.
While an immediate search was launched in Arizona for mother and daughter, they settled in Switzerland. As far as the American authorities were concerned, mother had abducted daughter - then aged four. Mr Pankratz, a wealthy pilot from Phoenix, was enraged at his ex-wife who he claimed had "kidnapped" their daughter to frustrate him and further reduce the already limited access he had under their 1982 divorce settlement.
While the case was high-profile in Arizona, it was only when Mr Pankratz initiated a campaign to "recover" his daughter that the story gained wider exposure.
His efforts included numerous interviews on television and radio, contact with police missing person bureaux around Europe and most haunting for Christa Johnson, pictures of her on milk cartons with the words "missing" written above her head.
In 1986 Mr Pankratz, with the assistance of Interpol, tracked Christa down in Switzerland. While she was playing in a lane-way near her house, her father approached, but she says she was so frightened she immediately took off and he could not find her.
After this meeting she and her mother vanished again, while Mr Pankratz took legal action to gain custody of his daughter back in the United States.
After contact was established between their lawyers and Irish Embassy officials in Switzerland, mother and daughter settled in Dublin and were granted temporary alien status. They were later awarded citizenship after assistance from several politicians, including Fine Gael TD Ms Nora Owen.
Christa enrolled in a school in Foxrock, Co Dublin, and believed the pursuit by her father had ended. However, one day her headmaster called her out of class and asked her to come to another room. Standing there was her father who, to her disgust, tried to embrace her in front of the teacher. "I don't want to see him," she cried and ran from the room.
This meeting was followed by a drawn-out custody battle with her father in the Irish courts which her mother won.
US Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and influential figure on Capitol Hill, was enlisted by Mr Pankratz to help his campaign to have his daughter brought back to the United States from the Republic. Mr McCain wrote to Irish politicians, various Government departments and then president Dr Patrick Hillery as part of the campaign. In the letters, he said Laraine and Christa should immediately be deported back to the United States. This failed to move the Irish authorities, who said it was a private matter between the principals.
Since then, mother and daughter have been at war with Mr Pankratz. In response, he has accused his ex-wife of "planting" the false memories of child abuse in Christa's mind. This is firmly denied by Christa who says she remembers in vivid detail the nights when her father used to come into her room and molest her in bed.
She told the court this happened between 1981 and 1983 when her father had access to her at weekends under terms of the divorce settlement with her mother.
"I would try to pretend I was already asleep," she testified in court, "but that really only worked once or twice". Her voice began to quaver as she told in graphic detail about repeated episodes of molesting.
"I couldn't understand why he would want to hurt me. And it didn't just hurt then - it hurt afterwards and it hurt and it burned," she said, sobbing on the witness-stand.
The central witness supporting her case was her pediatrician at the time the alleged assaults took place, Dr Cecilia Shembab.
She recounted treating Christa for increasingly difficult episodes of genital irritation. Dr Shembab described the child screaming in pain when she had to urinate.
When bacterial cultures repeatedly came back negative, Dr Shembab reported suspicions of sexual abuse to Child Protective Services, the Arizona agency responsible for investigating child abuse, in 1983. However it decided not to act.
As for the accusation that her mother planted the memories of child abuse in her head, Christa Johnson says it is absurd and hurtful.
"Some of things which happened to me took place when my mother wasn't even there," she says. "I gave the lawyers floor plans of our old house and told them the colours of the couches, described the dolls and toys I had. That is how well I remember the period," she says. Meanwhile, Mr Pankratz, who has remarried and has triplets, is steadfast in his denials of the child abuse allegations. He told The Irish Times last week that Christa was a threat to his new family who live in Pennsylvania. "She is a threat to my family and I will protect my family," he said.
In a 1987 newspaper interview, he said Christa "someday will arrive at her own conclusions about this and she will come and seek me out".
After hearing the evidence, which did not include Mr Pankratz in the witness-stand, Judge Talamante said he "believed" the truth of the evidence about child abuse, but said because Ms Johnson was such a "credit" he was dismissing the case for damages. Lawyers in Phoenix said it was one of the most surprising verdicts they had witnessed in the courts in many years. Ms Johnson is planning to appeal and expects to be back in Phoenix in several months with her mother.