Irish singer Dolores O’Riordan has opened up about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. In an interview with the Sunday Independent, the Cranberries singer said that she was abused between the ages of 8 and 12. "For four years, when I was a little girl I was sexually abused," she said. "I was only a kid." “We moved into a busy housing estate when I was seven. There were tonnes of people around all the time.” “My mother worked a lot to pay the bills and my father was oblivious to it” said O’Riordan. Dolores kept the abuse a secret for years and opened up to her mother, Eileen, about it eight years ago. She never told her father, who passed away in 2011 – she met her abuser again at his funeral. The singer admitted that it took years of counselling before she was able to confront her ordeal. "I never really talked about it because I actually wasn't able to” she said. “I see this as cleansing” she said of why she chose to speak out about her painful experience. “It is a way of emptying that closet - no more skeletons. Just peace and healing. No baggage.” The singer and her husband Don Burton have three children – Taylor (15), Molly (12) and Dakota (8). Image via Wikimedia Commons