When Sara was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1997 she was told by doctors that it was “most likely” as a result of the alleged sexual abuse she faced in Fermanagh as a child.

She also had to have 5.5 metres of her rectum removed “due to the damage done by years of abuse at the hands of Orangemen”, she said. “This was because it was severely damaged by repeated rape.

“I have two crushed cervical discs; one upper and one lower back resulting from trauma. My pelvis has been displaced and tilted on one side,” he said.

Sara added: “I remember asking the doctor why I got cervical cancer and he said there were a number of reasons; one was becoming sexually activity at an early age; two was having numerous sexual partners. I sat there in the Erne Hospital thinking that I am still paying for what those bast****s did to me all those years before.”

When the Public Prosecution Service dropped her case due to a lack of evidence Sara (not her real name) hit rock bottom.

“I was brought up to Belfast and I thought this was it; the PPS want to see me because this is going the whole way. But a man in a grey suit said ‘sorry, it is too long ago, there is a lack of material evidence’. I ended up back in Omagh.

“The man in the care unit who took my original statement believed me, he came to my house afterwards and told me how sorry he was.”

In the time ahead Sara kept a journal during the darkest period of her life along with almost every letter received from health professionals. She has shown this newspaper those letters.

There’s the 2003 letter by her Psychosexual Therapist which states that Sara suffered a “sense of differentness, guilt, shame, low self-esteem, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse, grief, depression, extreme dependency and impaired ability to judge trustworthiness."

A 2011 letter by Cognitive Behavioural Therapist stated that she had experienced “childhood trauma that has had an impact on her life and her overall well-being”.

She suffers from uterine problems including dysfunctional bleeding and currently has another cervical tumour.

And the timeline of health issues from her medical notes, which we have seen, paint a picture, she says, of the trauma she experienced for most of her life:

1988 - Alcohol abuse

1989 - Alcohol Treatment Centre for six weeks and again in 1999 - (she has been continuously sober since then)

1993 - Depression and drug overdose

1997 - Cervical cancer

1998 - Suicide attempt (at the time she was making her police statement)

2004 - 5.5 inches of her rectum removed she says “as a result of abuse”

2006 - Severe stress and adjustment disorder (during therapy)

2007 - Anxiety

2008 - Addiction to diazepam (prescribed since she was 12 years old for nightmares and sleep walking back in 1975)

2010 - Personality disorders

Plus - 20 admissions to a clinic in Omagh over the years for alcohol abuse, drug addiction and depression (the last admission was in 2010).

“All of this are now recognised by health professionals as some of the most common problems suffered by all victims of childhood sexual abuse,” said Sara.