''In the end my mother didn't want to know. She would join in with my father in punishing me. I still remember the day when I thought 'I'll never tell another human being, because if that's what my mother does to me, imagine what a stranger would do'.''

After escaping the family she spent time homeless, and eventually spoke to police. The court process was lengthy and difficult, and included two trials. In one of the trials Taylor was subjected to nine days of questioning and cross-examination, a process that was humiliating.

A guilty verdict and a nine-year jail sentence did not mend her relationship with her mother or brothers.

''My entire family turned on me.''

The family found it easier to ''expunge'' one member than to deal with the years of trauma, abuse and neglect. One aunt did maintain contact and love, until her death. When one of her brothers, Billy, died she was banned from the funeral, and was only able to say goodbye when a policeman and friend arranged a private viewing. At her graduation ceremonies she is usually accompanied by a well-loved priest and the policeman as none of her family has ever attended.

Social interaction can be awkward, particularly when people ask about her background. She does not celebrate birthdays, and chooses not to say when she was born, except that it was in the late 1960s. For privacy she holds certain facts to herself, as she is willing to talk about being a survivor but does not want people delving into the details of her case.

Her experience and the difficult court cases were part of the reason she has been drawn to study the area, but she insists she never intended for the issue to consume her life the way it has. After trawling through many thousands of pages of court transcripts, the patterns in the ways defence lawyers interrogated and intimidated child sex abuse victims shocked her.

After learning how common it was for lawyers to focus on minutiae and accuse children of lying, she ''knew too much to walk away''.

''I truly believed that no one would be interested in what I was doing,'' she says.

''What I'm proud of is that the work stands alone for its academic merit and rigour. And that makes me proud as Caroline the human being, Caroline the academic and Caroline the advocate because, without anyone knowing about my background, I did a PhD and I wrote Court Licensed Abuse.

''People talk about vested interests like somehow it's a nefarious thing, but it's not. It's an insight to something you cannot have unless you've walked in those shoes. And yet I never imagined I would work in this field. Never.

''The trial still affects me, on some levels. It just doesn't leave you. And the effect of the abuse, because I've been disowned by family, my father killed some of my pets, I've had to start in life all over again virtually from nothing.''

Taylor's first book, the handbook Surviving the Legal System, has been adopted in three states as a handbook for police who work with sexual assault victims. Her second, Court Licensed Abuse, came from the thesis that was the joint winner of the Jean Martin Award for best Australian thesis in social sciences in 2000-2001. She is writing her third book, due to be published next year.

For someone who says the field chose her, she is devoted, establishing the Caroline Taylor Foundation to help young survivors stay in school or achieve a higher education. A number of primary school and high school students in country Victoria are already being helped, while one woman has graduated with a tertiary degree and others are completing TAFE qualifications. The foundation is developing a therapeutic device, or toy, for child sex abuse victims.

After leaving school at 15 only to later thrive in academia, Taylor sees education as vital. Being in a university widened her world view and made her welcome, while her study and research helped her understand the abuse she suffered. Her study and work at the University of Ballarat also gave her confidence. Some lawyers and judges she has surprised over the years might argue that she has too much confidence. Taylor has been known to ask lawyers and judges improper and highly confronting questions, not in search of answers but to give them an idea of how children feel when put on the witness stand and are asked to re-live rape. Yet for all this confidence, the decision to reveal her past in 2004 was a difficult one.

''I was really worried that from then on I wouldn't be seen as 'Dr Taylor', I'd be seen as a victim. I remember thinking, 'This is going to have a high personal cost'. And yet, I realised that it would also be beneficial for survivors.''

Other survivors who have gone on to successful and high-profile lives, yet have chosen to keep their pain private, have expressed their admiration to her. Other figures, including Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and members of state parliament, have praised her publicly. In some people's eyes, Taylor and her work were tainted, and they told her as much.

''I did get some nice feedback, but I did get some cruel feedback,'' she recalls.

''People thought they could use it as my Achilles heel, to have a dig at me or stigmatise me. I felt a little bit helpless. Sometimes I was really stung. The first two times I did a Google search on myself I was really distressed about some of the things I read.''

Telling her story inspired other victims to come forward, either approaching her or contacting the police. She has thousands of letters and emails, drawings and presents; butterflies are a recurring theme, representing the change her help provoked.

While she does her best to help, in one case arranging support for a woman in Maine who contacted her by email, often her best advice is for people to seek help from professionals, be they counsellors or police.

''Because I never had anyone, I'm finding it hard to say no to anyone. And yet I'm becoming the repository of other people's atrocities. I've got my own that I still have to carry, because a lot of the abuse still haunts me. It was not just sexual, it was physical and it was psychological. I mean one of the judges that presided over the case said it was one of the worst cases he had ever heard in all his years on the bench.''

She would once travel at all hours of the day to visit rape victims, and would research cases and examples for high-profile law firms for free. She will now charge lawyers if they make major demands of her time, and is more reluctant to drop everything in her life for strangers. Still, it is common for her to work 70 or 80 hours a week, answering emails at all hours. ''I've had survivors, or those supporting them, ring me and those survivors threaten to commit suicide unless I agree to meet them because they feel they have to talk to me,'' she says.

''I was at a conference once and someone drove seven hours to meet me. I didn't know them from a bar of soap.

''Sometimes a lot of victim survivors tell me things, and they want to know if I suffered similar. I never realised that this would become so emotionally draining and difficult for me, because it's almost as if people are wanting really private parts of me. For me, it just has to tell you about the need out there.''

Draining as her work can be, the passion has not dimmed. Helping police secure a conviction or giving young girls the courage to speak give Taylor a great deal of satisfaction. A girl who Taylor emailed once kept a printout with her at all times, eventually printing several copies as the paper wore out. ''She wrote back months later and said she'd printed off my response, and she folded it up and it gets transferred from one school uniform to the next. She said 'I keep that email on me 24/7, that's how much your words mean'.

''I want to leave this world, whenever that's going to be, just knowing that children are far more respected. I don't think we will eradicate abuse in my lifetime, but hopefully we will have reached a stage where children are more respected and more valued and more protected. I'd love it one day if, 30 or 40 years down the track, someone read Court Licensed Abuse as a historical text about what used to happen in the dim, dark ages of the 1990s and 2000.''