A WEST Dorset woman who was the victim of abuse is urging other sufferers to speak out.

The said she was compelled to speak after the 10th Earl of Sandwich’s son Robert Montagu revealed he had been abused by his father.

The woman, in her 50s, was so traumatised by being raped by a succession of Asian men more than 30 years ago she’s never spoken about her ordeal – not even to her family.

But in the light of Mr Montagu’s story of his abuse and seeing his courage she wants to tell her story to try and encourage others to speak out.

She is going to Mr Montagu for counselling and while she is not yet ready to be identified she wants to take the first steps by revealing what happened to her as a naive teenager from Bridport living in London.

The woman was working as a secretary when she was held captive by five Asian men and used as a prostitute during an 18-hour ordeal. She met her abuser at a disco and wrongly believed he knew her friend.

They danced and he was charming and when he offered to drive her home she thought it would be fine. He made an excuse to stop to see someone on the way home. She waited in the car but he finally persuaded her to come in.

So began her nightmare.

She fought, she tried to break a window with her elbow but she couldn’t escape.

She was taken to a room and her arms and legs were held down and she was raped by five men.

They threatened to kill her. A threat she believed.

They offered her drugs and a share of their ‘takings’ from the men raping her. She refused.

“There was no emotion in any of them. I was less than nothing to them,” she said.

Finally they gave her back her clothes and dropped her off at a bus stop in East London and left her to pick up the pieces of her life.

She said: “I didn’t go to the police until three days later. I just wanted to curl up at home and not function.

“But they had obviously done it before and they would obviously be doing it again and I thought I can’t let it continue.”

She went to the police three days later but when she was told she couldn’t remain anonymous she couldn’t agree to go to court.

She said: “I never told anyone else.”

She still can’t bear her family to know even all these years later and even though the constant news about the abuse in Rotherham is stirring up bitterly painful memories.

She said: “I couldn’t bear for them to see me in any other light than they do now, which is as a strong caring mother, daughter, sister, friend.”