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[44] In such circumstances the room for the inference that counsel would have us
draw must be very limited. The plaintiff obviously knew at all material times that the
defendant was the physical agent of the abuse. Her expert witness expressly
disavowed any possibility of suppression of her memory of the events. That of course
does not mean that in adult life she was able to confront them willingly or with
adequate comprehension. Nor does it prove that she knew or accepted that
responsibility for the abuse lay with the defendant. The incidents in adulthood which
counsel has cited are consistent with the plaintiff’s knowledge that the defendant had
abused her, but they were visceral reactions falling short of rational appreciation that
he rather than herself was the culpable party. It is more likely that the plaintiff
developed insight, and with it the meaningful knowledge of the wrong that sets the
prescriptive process in motion, only when the progressive course of self-discovery
finally removed the blindfold she had worn since the malign influences which I have
described took over her psyche. On the probabilities that did not occur until some
time in 1997. The defendant’s counsel did not submit, correctly given the facts, that
(to use the language of s 5(1)(c)) the plaintiff might reasonably have been expected to
have had knowledge of the wrong before she acquired actual knowledge.
[45] In the result the trial judge should have dismissed the special plea of
prescription and proceeded to a consideration of the merits. It accordingly becomes
unnecessary to consider the submissions of the plaintiff’s counsel that the plaintiff
was disabled (within the meaning of s 7(1)(b) of the 1943 Act) from pursuing her
claim until 1997 or was immune to the running of prescription because of common
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