Anne is 33 years old. As a small child, she was sexually abused by a neighbour and she has spent years battling serious illness.
She has been in and out of hospital for treatment of anorexia nervosa, a condition which has almost killed her.
But that is not all that Anne (which is not her real name) has had to contend with. During one of her stays in psychiatric hospital in 2000, she fell under the care of a British psychiatrist employed there as locum.
This was Dr John Harding-Price, who worked in two Irish psychiatric hospitals - St Luke's in Clonmel and St Canice's in Kilkenny - despite being under investigation and eventually struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) in the UK.
Three patients in Britain had made complaints about him. The GMC found that in the case of a 17-year-old patient, Harding-Price had "failed to respect her privacy and dignity" by keeping her undressed unnecessarily and by moving her underpants without her consent. This patient wept in distress as she gave evidence against him during the hearing.
Harding-Price had subjected another patient to persistent questioning about her sex life and had breached confidentiality. He had failed in his standard of clinical care to a third patient.
The GMC struck him off the register of medical practitioners, stating that his "conduct displays an approach to practice which has no place in medicine".
Harding-Price appealed this decision to the Privy Council of the House of Lords, which rejected his case out of hand. Its judgment stated that he had shown "a remarkable lack of insight into why [ the patients] had found his conduct upsetting. The conclusion was irresistible that, given the opportunity, he would be likely to continue to put at risk the dignity and privacy of patients in the future."
Unable to practise in Britain, Harding-Price arrived in this country and was promptly given a job by the South-eastern Health Board. He had been registered to practise here for a number of years and the Irish Medical Council decided to allow him to continue, despite the evidence from the UK. ("In Ireland you are treated like a gentleman, even if you are under investigation," he told me.)
Meanwhile, Harding-Price had been treating Anne for her anorexia. She became distressed and alarmed at his attitude. At one stage, he lifted up her T-shirt without her permission and told her she had a fine body for a woman. On another occasion, he attempted to bring her out to a local swimming pool, again contrary to her wishes.
Anne, with the support of her family, decided to take a complaint against Harding-Price to the health board. To allow him to mount a defence, the psychiatrist was given a copy of Anne's medical file, on the strict undertaking that he return it upon completion of the investigation, an undertaking which he signed.
However, despite repeated requests from the health board, he did not return Anne's highly sensitive and private medical notes. In fact, he proceeded to disseminate details from her file to third parties, in a flagrant breach of confidentiality.
He provided intimate details of Anne's medical history to a newspaper and a local radio station. He also dispatched her entire file to the Minister for Health. Anne and her family complained to the Medical Council, who eventually found him guilty of professional misconduct for this in May 2005. They handed out only the mildest penalty of an admonishment.
Against specific instructions from the health board, Harding-Price also persisted in writing numerous letters to Anne herself, which only intensified her distress and her gnawing fear that her personal and private details were being spread far and wide. He even suggested publication of her story.
And these letters keep coming. The latest arrived just before Christmas. Anne is still being treated for anorexia and remains in a fragile state. She finds his letters deeply upsetting.
Anne's mother, on her daughter's behalf, took a further complaint to the Medical Council on this. "I felt that someone must be able to stop him harassing Anne and causing her such distress," she told me. She had great hopes that the Medical Council would act to protect her daughter.
On Christmas Eve, she received the Medical Council's decision. There would be no hearing, they said, as there was no prima-facie evidence against the doctor concerned.
The council also wrote to Harding-Price, to let him know he was off the hook. Incredibly, though, it added the following: "Should you disseminate any further confidential information or make any contact with the [ X] family it may be left with no option but to hold an inquiry concerning your professional conduct." Anne's mother was outraged by this.
"They tell me," she said, "that there's no evidence Harding-Price has done anything wrong, but then they tell him that if he does it again, they'll hold a hearing. Surely he is either acting wrongly or he isn't? They seem to want to protect the doctor and not the patient. But who's going to protect Anne and her privacy? And who's going to protect the rest of us the next time any doctor breaches patient confidentiality?"