A RAPE victim has told how she would not endure the humiliation of completing the “rape clause” form to qualify for benefits for a third child.

The woman, who formerly worked in a housing benefits office, told The Orkney News website she was “angry and overwhelmingly sad” for women who would be forced into that situation.

The woman was speaking out ahead of a Holyrood debate on the issue today, which is expected to end with a parliamentary condemnation of the rape clause and the family cap on benefits.

She said: “I was raped and have had intensive amounts of counselling – and worked hard myself – to get over it, but I’d be damned if I would go through the details of it to anyone outside my closest family and friends, and certainly not in a cold-hearted office to a stranger who is trying to take money away from you.

‘‘I always thought the Tories were bad, but this makes everything that they have ever done before look like a picnic in the park.

“I am angry and overwhelmingly sad for the women that they are going to put into a horrid situation with no care and then that [May] says she’s a Christian.

"No, that is just a feeble lie and, whilst I rarely think that there’s a hell, I would find it hard to spill any tears over her being there – as that is what she is condemning these poor women to have to be in.

“I’m happy for my comments to go anywhere that it may help or ensure that no-one has to ever go through having to relive their experience in front of a cold situation to get child benefit. Having also worked in a housing benefits office – I kinda know what some of them are like as well – and I know I sure wouldn’t.

“I can’t tell you how the depth of my heart hurts when I hear that woman Ruth [Davidson, Scottish Tory leader] saying that she thinks it’s not wrong – that any woman can say that is disgusting.”

Fiona Grahame, writer and co-founder of The Orkney News site, told The National: “It was a very difficult and extremely brave decision for this woman to speak out, because the man responsible is still out there. A society without compassion and decency where we stigmatise the most vulnerable when we should be supporting them is a corrupt rotten society.

“The rape clause is the vilest attack on our welfare system yet. It is up to us to refuse to accept the normalisation of cutting support to those most in need.”

At today’s Holyrood debate First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will warn the two-child tax credit limit and rape clause are “illustrative of the damage Tory governments do”.

She will say: “The rape clause is an abomination – it is a grotesque policy, which must be scrapped ... but it is policies like this, and other attacks on the most vulnerable in society – including pensioners, the disabled, vulnerable young adults and the bereaved – which would be pursued by a Tory government with a bigger majority.

“Today Scotland’s Parliament must send an unequivocal and powerful message to the Tory government that the two-child limit and the rape clause must be scrapped.”