An 89-year-old widow has said that she can not look at her home where she lived for 50 years after she was violently assualted in 2015, writes Ciara Phelan.

Eva Sutton suffered seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, cuts and scars to her face which required stitching after two men kicked their way through her front door in September 2015.

Despite pleading with the men to stop, they dragged her by her hair from room to room before tying her up with her dog's lead.

Ms Sutton fought back tears as she told RTÉ that she passes her home in which she lived since 1959 but can not bring herself to look at it since the attack.

She is now living in a nursing home.

"Maybe I'm foolish but I couldn't bring myself to look at it," she told RTÉ.

"I had a lot of very happy memories, I reared my family there."

Ms Sutton said she was really misses the independence of going out and about to meet her friends.

"I was still able to do everything for myself at home and go out and about to the shops and meet my friends.

"I miss all that, I miss the people of Bray, I really do miss them." she said.

Today, a 25-year-old year old man who had a history of criminal offences has been jailed for eight years after what was described as a "vicious, violent, savage, and brutal" attack on Ms Sutton.

The career criminal was joined by an accomplice, Jamie O'Brien who is already serving a ten-year sentence for the same crime.

At Wicklow Circuit court, Judge Michael O'Shea said that no mercy or sympathy was shown to Ms Sutton and that the attack ruined her life and robbed her independence.

Speaking to Paul Reynolds,Eva Sutton says she never went back to her home of 50 years following the attack & is now living in a nursing home pic.twitter.com/K3rSxE7leS — RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 25, 2017

Cash and O'Brien ransacked the house before escaping with a number of Ms Sutton's personal possessions which included diamond and eternity rings and watches. They also tried to pull her wedding ring from her finger but failed to do so.

The attackers showed her no mercy despite her telling them: "I'm dying, I'm dying."

Judge O'Shea said Ms Sutton was in a vulnerable, hopeless situation and they subjected her to a savagery unimaginable to another human being.

A "humiliating, terrifying horrific, degrading ordeal."

Ms Sutton who has been described as a "decent, wonderful, kind" widow has said she does not recall if Cash and O'Brien left but waited until complete silence before loosening the lead around her legs.

“I looked up the road, there was a man standing at the bus stop. I shouted help, but he ignored me,” she said.

"I knew the time was coming and I was getting on in years and that I would eventually have to give it up but I wasn't ready for that, anything near that."

Cash who has 96 previous convictions, 29 of those for previous thefts and burglaries, was on bail at the time of attack.

He was sentenced to ten years in prison with the final two suspended.