It was a Saturday in 1984 and I was working as a reporter in the Tribune. The news editor got an anonymous call saying that a girl had died a few days earlier after giving birth in Granard and I was to follow it up.

I went through the newspapers and found a notice for the death of Ann Lovett in the Irish Independent. I called the gardaí and they confirmed she died giving birth and then called the school and they also confirmed it.

I remember there was a big debate in the newsroom then about whether we should name Ann Lovett in the story. It was the journalist Maggie O'Kane who said that no one would remember an anonymous child, but that everyone would remember the name Ann Lovett.

We named her in the article and it became a massive story. It came on the back of the 1983 abortion referendum [which resulted in the Supreme Court allowing for abortion where there is a substantial risk to the life of the mother]. Part of that debate was how pregnant women were treated.

The next week, I was sent down to Granard to do a follow-up story. The people in the town refused to talk and were really hurt by the way Granard had been portrayed. People were very nervous about speaking to journalists and were very hostile. Some felt the town had been caricatured. A few local men did talk to us one night in the hotel bar. I got the impression that some people in the town did know Ann had been pregnant.

It's astonishing that 25 years on, it seems we know little more about how Ann Lovett died than in the week she died. It's amazing that there has never been a picture of her either. I wasn't a mother at the time, but now that I am, I can imagine a bit better the immense pain this has caused her mother. The thought of a young teenager giving birth alone in a grotto is still heartbreaking.

Emily O'Reilly is the ombudsman