The woman claiming to be the mother of an infant found stabbed to death in a laneway in south Dublin 34 years ago has told an inquest that she was raped repeatedly from the age of eight into her teenage years by four people.
Cynthia Owen told Dublin County Coroner's Court yesterday that in 1973 she witnessed a woman, referred to in her statement as B, stab a baby she had just given birth to as a result of this abuse. She stabbed the newborn with knitting needles before attempting to gas the infant in the oven.
"I went downstairs and told my mother I wasn't well and then I went upstairs and gave birth . . . My father was in bed when it happened . . . I gave birth on the bedroom floor," she told the court.
Ms Owen, then aged 11, said she witnessed a woman stab the infant she had given birth to with knitting needles in an upstairs bedroom in the family home at Whites Villas, Dalkey, in south Dublin.
Ms Owen claimed she blacked out after watching the stabbing and when she awoke she was on the floor in the same spot with "three leather belts around her legs".
A person referred to as C then untied the restraints and Ms Owen said she tried to run out the front door. "B opened the hall door and told me to get into the sitting room. She had the baby in blankets and the baby was covered in blood. I then became hysterical."
Ms Owen alleged that the woman then began again stabbing the baby on the floor and another person, referred to as G, "suggested to try and kill her with the gas oven" as the baby was still moving. "B knelt down to do this, holding her own face away so the gas fumes wouldn't go near her."
Ms Owen claimed that after this, B continued to stab the infant until it stopped moving. She then went with the woman to dump the baby's remains in Lee's Lane car park in Dún Laoghaire, she said.
Legal representative for Ms Owen's father, Peter Murphy snr, and three of her sisters, Catherine Stevenson, Esther Roberts and Margaret Stokes, suggested to the court "that maybe none of it is true". Ms Owen's mother died last year. Caroline Kelly BL told the inquest that her clients strongly denied that Ms Owen ever gave birth to a baby in 1973 as a result of sexual abuse.
Giving evidence, Ms Owen told of anal, oral and vaginal rape that she claimed began at age eight and continued until she was 15.
She alleged that she was raped two to three times a week, sometimes more than once a night. She alleged that being raped anally by A in the family home "caused agonising pain so great that I almost lost consciousness".
She told the court that some of her brothers and sisters and her niece were also sexually abused and at least two went on to commit suicide.
Ms Owen also alleged in court that a man, referred to as E, visited the family home and gave cigarettes, alcohol and money to B in order to have non-consensual sex with her.
The inquest into the baby's death was reopened in September 2005 after legal representations were made on behalf of Ms Owen, who came forward 12 years ago claiming to be the mother of the baby girl, called Noeleen.
Ms Owen made statements to police in Britain in 1994 following counselling that alleged the infant's murder and sexual abuse.
Ms Owen has claimed the baby was one of two she gave birth to at a young age as a result of sexual abuse during the 1970s when she was living in Dalkey.