Katriona O'Sullivan

So the reason I... So in Poor, I talk about just one incident.

Like as a...

Children who are poor are nine times or ten times more likely to be sexually abused in childhood.

And one in four adults in Ireland will have experienced sexual trauma in childhood, Brendan.

One in three women are raped.

This is not a rare incident and it is something I think we need to normalise conversations about sometimes because when you can't talk about something or you're told you're not allowed, it adds shame.

I've nothing to be ashamed of and neither has any other victim.

But in my case, as I am this bright light as a child and all of us are born to grow towards the light.

And I knew what happened to me was wrong because it really hurt me and terrified me.

And I had learned from the world when bad things happen, you tell somebody.

And I told my mom and she when I told her, I said, this man did this awful thing to me.

And she just looked at me and she said, well, he did the same to me.

And it was like this crack within my psyche, not just – well, the experience was the crack because what that experience did, what being sexually abused did to me is it made me feel like my body was a place of shame, that my body invited it.

And something that I talk about in this book, and I think it's rare that we talk about, is actually my body responded with pleasure to that experience.

Because our bodies are designed for pleasure.

Little girls' bodies are designed for pleasure from birth.

Like we can orgasm quite young, Brendan.

And my body did what it was naturally meant to do when it stimulated.

It felt pleasure.

But I also had this terrifying experience going on at the same time.