Honor Bright was the first victim of extreme violence taking place in the sanctuary of that wild empty landscape. The first victim of the mountains. But not the last.

This past week, once again, a woman was plucked from the streets of Dublin, and driven up to the mountains. She was subjected to a six-hour ordeal, during which she was beaten with a baseball bat, had her teeth broken, and suffered severe facial injuries. Then she was sexually assaulted. It was only when two hill walkers happened upon the attack that the woman's ordeal ended. She was thrown out of the car, onto the mountains. A man has been charged with the assault.

The horrific incident was the latest in a litany of attacks on women in these mountains. Just over 50 years after Honor Bright's body was discovered, a 23-year-old woman went missing from outside the Keadeen Hotel in Newbridge, Co Kildare. It was 22 December, 1979, and Phyllis Murphy was last seen waiting for a bus to Kildare town, where she intended to spend the Christmas holidays with her family. She never got on the bus.

Four weeks later, her naked body was discovered at Ballinagee Bridge in the Wicklow Gap. Forensic examination revealed that she had been savagely raped, beaten and strangled. Blood samples were taken, and kept by the Garda Technical Bureau. Some 23 years later, when DNA samples could be analysed and traced, a former army sergeant, John Crerar, was arrested and convicted for her murder. He claimed he had never spoken to her before.

The jury didn't believe him.

In 1982, 21-year-old Patricia Furlong from Dundrum, Dublin was raped, and then strangled with her own blouse at the Fraughan beer festival at Johnnie Fox's pub in Glencullen. Nine years later, in 1991, gardai arrested a former disc jockey, Vincent Connell, for the murder.

He was convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. But the court of Criminal Appeal later quashed the conviction, and Connell was released. He died of a heart attack in April 1998, and still, no one knows who murdered Patricia Furlong.

Five years after that death, 27year-old Antoinette Smith disappeared after attending a David Bowie concert at Slane Castle in Co Meath. Following the concert, the mother-of-two had returned to Dublin to the Harp Bar on O'Connell Bridge, before going on to a disco in Parnell Street.

Her disappearance was reported by her estranged husband, but the ensuing garda investigation hit a dead end, and the case was shelved. It was suspected by gardai that Smith had run off with another man. Until nine months later, when her decomposing body was discovered in a shallow grave by a family who happened to be walking in the Dublin-Wicklow mountains.

Forensic examination of her body showed she was raped and strangled. Her head was reported to have been covered by a plastic bag.

The reopened garda investigation again led nowhere.

Three years later, on the same stretch of mountain bog, a second grave was discovered. A Dublin man was cutting turf when he uncovered a woman's hand and forearm. Patricia Doherty had been found. The 30-year-old prison officer and mother of two young children had disappeared just before Christmas 1991. She left her home on the evening of 23 December, to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. She was never seen alive again.

Doherty's husband reported her disappearance to gardai on Christmas morning, but it wasn't until the following June, when the dry weather caused the peat bank near the Lemass Cross to subside, that the turf-cutter found her body. She had been strangled and buried there. Despite a garda investigation, her killer has never been found.

Also in 1991, 31-year-old Patricia O'Toole from south Co Dublin was murdered. O'Toole made one big mistake. She asked for directions.

She had been out socialising with friends, and was driving near the South Circular Road when she asked a stranger . . . soldier, Private Sean Courtney . . . for the best way to go. Courtney talked his way into getting in her car, and then misdirected her. He later insisted that his mind was unbalanced at the time.

O'Toole was viciously beaten, driven up the mountains, stripped, and bludgeoned to death. Her murder captured the public's attention, and two barmen who had been walking home from work on the night of her death told gardai that they had seen her talking to Courtney. This changed the focus of the garda investigation, and Courtney was charged and convicted of O'Toole's murder.

Two years later, on 3 March 1993, a 26-year-old American student, Annie McCarrick, left her flat in Sandymount for a trip to Glencullen. The last sighting of the young woman . . . in the company of a young man near Johnny Fox's pub . . . has never been confirmed. No trace of her has ever been found, but it is believed she was abducted and murdered.

One year later, on 29 December 1994, a former heroin addict was abducted by two men and subjected to a horrific two-hour ordeal at Powerscourt mountain. The woman later told the jury how her attackers, Adrian Power from the Curragh and his companion, Thomas Stokes, "pulled her around like a rag doll". She described how they took turns in forcing her into sex while shouting threats at her.

She said she thought they were going to kill her. Adrian Power was later jailed for 10 years for the attack. Stokes was given a life sentence.

In April 1999, a Dublin journalist stepped out of Brady's pub in Terenure and made the mistake of taking a lift from a motorcyclist.

The man offered to drive her to Rathfarnham, but stopped in a gateway before sexually assaulting her. A 40-year-old courier was convicted of the assault in November 2004.

It was one year later, in February 2000, that a Carlow woman left work and walked to a nearby car park. Larry Murphy was waiting.

He had spotted her earlier, and was stalking her. He approached her, struck her in the face with enough force to fracture her nose, stripped her, tied her hands using her bra, and bundled her into the boot of his car. He drove nine miles to Beaconstown, raped her and put her back in the boot. He then drove 14 miles to Castledermot and up the Dublin-Wicklow mountains. He drove into the forest, raped the woman two more times, and then started to strangle her. He placed a shopping bag over her head, and forced it into her mouth.

From somewhere, the woman gained strength and started to kick.

She freed her hands, and kicked again. Murphy slammed the bootlid on her legs. And then he saw the lights of an approaching car. Ken Jones and Trevor Moody were out hunting deer. They heard what they thought were the screams of an animal. Instead, they found a bloodied, beaten, naked woman, running frantically away. She careered directly into barbed wire, causing further injury to herself. The men untangled her. She was saved. Larry Murphy was sentenced to 15 years for the attack.

Many other women have gone missing and never been found. It is widely speculated that there are more unmarked graves hiding the bodies of murder victims in the Dublin-Wicklow mountains. Honor Bright's death is marked by a plaque, and fresh flowers are regularly placed there in her memory.

Kirsten Sheridan, daughter of film director Jim, is making a movie based on her life and death. But for the other women, those who have been found, and those who are still hidden, there is no movie or plaque. Just the bog, and the forest, and the mountains. With all its secrets.