09 July, 2007 - Published 16:00 GMT
Sinead O'Connor: combatting abuse
Irish singer Sinead O'Connor has talked to Outlook about her childhood when she was abused and her subsequent controversial career.
O'Connor is a Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter but, as she disclosed to Outlook presenter Fred Dove, she owes her success to a nun at a Irish reform school.
"The nun very cleverly observed that the only thing that I was interested in was music..." she said, "So she got me a guitar and employed a guitar teacher to come and teach me specifically."
O'Connor had been placed in the reform school after suffering years of violent abuse from her mother.
"My mother was an extremely violent person," she said, "Someone who wasn't well... When my father was present, my mother wouldn't be violent - but when my father left for any length of time she became violent."
When her parents split up, the judge described her mother's behaviour as 'extremely barbaric' and gave custody of Sinead and two of her sibblings to her father.
But Sinead said that she'd been traumatised to leave her mother went back to live with her.
"In hindsight, that wasn't the wisest idea because things got a little rough," she said, "But still I probably wouldn't regret that decision because you love your mother - it doesn't matter what she's like."
Unfortunately the abuse continued.
"She used to drive me and my sister around with collection boxes pretending they were for charity," she said, "Myself and my sister would go into pubs and collect hundreds of pounds and bring them home and my mother would take the money."
It was this sort of behaviour - together with her non-attendance at school - which led to her being sent to Catholic reform school at the age of 14.
"While it was very traumatic, it was the best thing that ever happened to me actually," she said.
"They were good to me. They were nice people. The nun that ran the place was the person that bought me my first guitar."
Despite displaying this gratitude, O'Connor's relationship with the Catholic church has frequently been controversial.
In 1992 she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II live on NBC television - inspired, she says, by the abuse of Irish children prevalent in the Catholic church at the time.
"The issue of child sexual abuse within the Catholic church became an issue 10 years before it became an issue in England or America," she said
"That was around 1992. How it came to light was that some survivors of that abuse had become adults and had decided to bring cases against particular priests - and the Catholic Church in Ireland was working on the families of those survivors in order to silence them.
"That was really where I was coming from. As a survivor of child abuse myself, I could see the horror of what was being done to these survivors.
"I guess I felt strongly about it also because I love Catholicism and I love the idea of God and I think it was a very unchristian way to be acting."
At one point, O'Connor formed a breakaway Catholic church, calling herself Sister Bernadette.
"That's something I keep very very private," she said, "It's still a huge part of my being but it wouldn't be safe for me to be talking about it to be honest."
She also talked about her depression: at the age of 23 she was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, which often makes her feel suicidal.
"My major symptom was always very very depressed," she said, "That suicidal thinking became louder and louder and louder until it was ridiculous.
"Obviously I have that illness and I have to stay on the medication for it for the rest of my life but thank god that medication works.
I'm a strong person and every time I felt like that I took myself to the doctor. I was never worried that I might carry it out but I felt that a person ought not live feeling like that.
Now aged 40, O'Connor, who has four children, wouldn't be drawn on her plans for the future.
"I don't really make plans or anything. I just see what happens basically."
O'Connor was in London to promote her most recent album: Theology.
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