A woman has told a Central Criminal Court jury that a newspaper article in which the accused in a sex assault trial asked "How can anyone take away a child's innocence?" made her want to come forward with her complaint that he sexually abused her for four years as a child.
The now 35-year-old woman said the "question" in the article triggered memories of the childhood trauma she suffered at his hands from the time she was seven until she was eleven.
"He had taken away my innocence. That question made me feel as if I did not matter, that what I had gone through was inconsequential," she told the jury.
What eventually made her actually lodge the complaint four years later, she said, was her fear for the accused man's young children. She said she had visions of what could happen to them in his hands as she remembered what she had been through.
The now 66-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to a total of 33 charges alleging sexual assaults on four females on dates from May 1974 to January 1989.
He denies one charge each of attempted carnal knowledge and attempted rape of two girls, and a further 31 charges of indecent assault involving them and two other girls, all of them under 15 years of age at the time.
She denied, in cross examination by Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC, that it was a failed attempt at "going to sleep forever" after taking an overdose of anti-depressants that she had struck out at the accused because she needed to blame somebody.
She agreed with Mr O'Carroll (with Ms Iseult O'Malley) that she had been depressed after giving birth, and that she had taken an overdose with the intention of "going to sleep forever".
But, she said, it was not postnatal depression but memories of the accused man's actions, triggered by the newspaper article, which had robbed her of her sleep and depressed her to the extent that she had felt the need for such drastic action.
Prosecuting counsel, Mr Patrick McCarthy SC told the jury when he opened the trial the accused used a radio station he operated to draw young girls into his houses for "sexually predatory purposes" over a period of 15 years.
The hearing continues before Mr Justice John Quirke and a jury of four women and eight men.