A young woman has told the Central Criminal Court that her earliest memory is of being sexually abused by her mother when she was three years old.
The woman, who is now in her 20s, was giving evidence in the trial of three people including her mother and uncle who are charged with raping and sexually assaulting her when she was a very young child.
The woman's mother faces 13 charges of sexual assault and a charge of rape relating to an incident where she allegedly facilitated the rape of her child at the age of six.
The complainant's uncle is charged with six counts of rape including oral rape.
A third man, who was a family friend, faces one count of oral rape.
All three deny the charges.
They cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the complainant.
In the witness box today, the woman said as a young child she lived in a house with other adult family members, each of whom had issues with alcohol.
She said they drank "all the time" and violent fights would erupt.
The woman said her earliest memory was being sexually abused by her mother at the age of around three and a half.
She outlined incidents of the sexual abuse in her home, in the room she shared with her mother, and while staying at a family-owned holiday home.
She described how her mother got her to carry out sexual acts on her and was sexually assaulted by her mother which she said "hurt" and felt "weird".
She said she did not understand what was happening.
This happened a number of times but she could not say how many times.
She said her mother stopped abusing her when she got her periods at the age of 12.
She also described being raped just before her sixth birthday by her uncle in his room while her mother was present.
She said it really hurt and afterwards her mother took her back to her own room.
She said she was also orally raped by her uncle and remembered other times being raped by him while in her own bed.
The witness said she also believed that at the age of 12 she had a miscarriage.
She said she believed it was a miscarriage because she had never experienced anything like it since.
She said her mother told her it was "nothing, just your period".
Asked why she thought she could have been pregnant she replied "because I got raped by [her uncle]".
The woman also described seeing her mother and her uncle have sex with each other in a bedroom while she was present.
She said her mother could be "vicious" and would often bite and punch her.
She was verbally nasty as well and would call her "a piece of shit" and tell her to "f**k off".
"I got told to go f**k myself a number of times. I was really young. I was a child," she said.
She said she never told anyone what had happened to her because she had normalised it in her own mind.
"In a way it did not occur to me to speak to anyone about it. It felt normal. I know it’s not normal now obviously.
"At the time it was [her mother] and [uncle], they were the grown-ups so if they didn’t have…no I never told anybody."
She said in school when friends started talking about sex she was shocked and wondered how did they know.
The witness also described being orally raped at the age of 13 by a family friend who was a regular visitor to the house.
She said the man had come into a games room while she was playing a PlayStation and had locked the door to the room and told her "your mother knows" before orally raping her.
She said she left the room afterwards and did not tell anyone.
She said she later moved out of the home and lived with family friends for a while.
Tusla had become involved with her family because there was "a lot of neglect" and the house was dirty and untidy, the roof leaked and it was cold.
She said she made a statement to gardaí but never told them about the sexual abuse because she could not cope with it, did not want to deal with it and had "pushed it away".
She also said she had a fear of gardaí at the time as she had been encouraged to be afraid of them and to dislike them.
This arose because her mother's partner had twice crashed his car and gardaí had visited the house and there was a "general bad attitude" towards the gardaí.
She did not make a complaint to gardaí until some years later when she had moved to another part of the country and began attending a rape crisis centre.
Asked in cross examination by counsel for her mother if the first alleged incident which she said took place when she was three and a half years old was a feeling or a belief rather than a memory she replied it was a memory.
She agreed with Desmond Dockery SC she did not understand what was happening but said she remembered her mother telling her not to tell another family member and that it was as secret.
Asked if she had any memory of not wanting to do it or crying or trying to get out of the bed she replied "no".
She did not remember the moments leading up to the incident.
It was also put to her that she could outline in "micro detail" two incidents of sexual abuse when she was on a holiday as a four year old but could not remember how long the holiday was.
Her cross-examination continues tomorrow.
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