The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse

The Cranberries' Dolores Huff HuffPo Post st Cana Canada da Musi Music c Posted: 11/13/2013 10:20 Share Tweet Email Comment The Cranberries' Dolores  as a child.

O'Riordan Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse | By By Jas Jason on MacN MacNei eil l am EST Updated: 11/14/2013 8:38 am EST DOLORES ORIORDAN

O'Riordan has revealed she was a victim of sexual abuse

The singer told the Irish Independent the abuse took place between the ages of e ight and 12 near her home county of Limerick, Ireland. O'Riordan said the person  who molested her was in a position of trust. As O'Riordan was born in 1971 the time period would be somewhere approximately between 1979 and 1983. "It is cleansing," she said in the interview for the publication's LIFE magazine . "I never really talked about it before because I, actually, wasn't able to, to  be honest with you. It took years and years of counselling. It is something tha t I carried forever. There is a great sense of a great burden off my shoulders. I feel it is going to help me by opening up and just confessing to all of those people who bought my albums and that love me." O'Riordan refused to reveal the person responsible for the abuse but also said s he never revealed what happened to her father who suffered brain damage in a 196 8 bike accident. "My father would have killed him had my poor father not been re tarded," O'Riordan said according to an article in RSVP Magazine. The singer said coming to terms with what happened also came from her family, in cluding her three children Taylor, Mollie and Dakota. "It gets hard as well when  you have daughters because you get flashbacks when you're with them and when yo u are watching them," O'Riordan said. "You wonder how can anyone get satisfactio n in any way -- you know? The kids were actually completely elemental in my heal ing process." The admission was lauded by Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, CEO of Ireland's Rape Crisis Centre. "I think she's shown tremendous courage and great generosity in speaking  out, because when people like her talk about the terrible trauma inflicted upon  them, it encourages others to come forward," she said. O'Riordan released her last studio album in 2009 entitled "No Baggage" but recen tly became a talent coach on the Irish television series "The Voice of Ireland."  The Cranberries meanwhile reunited in 2009 and released a new studio album "Ros es" in 2012. So far none of her fellow bandmates in The Cranberries have comment ed regarding the singer's admission.