GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Even as Quentin Carter spent 17 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, the girl whose false testimony put him there says she also suffered.

"I've been living with this my whole life," the woman said during an interview Tuesday, June 16. "It was terrible. It was terrible."

The 34-year-old mother of two was a 10-year-old girl living with Aurelias Marshall, now a convicted murderer and at the time her mother's boyfriend, in a house on the Southeast Side.

Marshall would escape justice for 25 years before he was convicted for the June 11, 1990, beating death of Joel Battaglia.

The 10-year-old girl says she saw a blood-spattered Marshall return home that night, but she did not know what he had done to the young man on Lake Drive. She did, however, have firsthand knowledge of the brutality Marshall could inflict.

The woman says that her mother, an admitted crack addict and prostitute, lived for four years with Marshall, who routinely physically abused the 10-year-old girl and her siblings. This, according to the woman and Kent County prosecutors, included the sexual assault of the girl.

One assault sent her to the hospital with sex-related injuries, and it was there that the girl told police that she was raped by then 16-year-old Quentin Carter.

She said Marshall, in full view of her mother, beat her with an extension cord and created the story the 10-year-old would tell police and later a Kent County Circuit Court jury that helped convict Carter of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Related: Wrongful rape conviction, 17-year prison term 'makes my stomach turn,' advocate says

She said she had never spoken to Carter in her life and that his name was chosen at random when Marshall found his name in the garbage outside a neighborhood home. The woman says Carter's age and proximity made him the best possible patsy.

She said Marshall made up the other names she was told to feed to police or face a beating.

In a Grand Rapids District Court probable cause hearing from October 1991, the girl testified that she had been inside her home in the 400 block of Barth Avenue SE the previous month when someone knocked at her door. She said she went to the door and was dragged outside where three men forced her to the ground.

She said that one man she identified only as "Frank" sexually assaulted her and that Carter, who she recognized only as a former neighbor from Wealthy Street SE, held her arms down. No one else was charged with the sexual assault.

Under questioning from former Kent County Prosecuting Attorney Helen Brinkman, the girl said that Carter also sexually assaulted her.

The girl's description was detailed and included what clothing was and wasn't removed from her body and where the various players were standing as the attack unfolded. She said her mother was at the store for about 20 minutes when it happened.

"He pulled his peter weter out and put it in my privacy," the girl told the judge, according to court transcripts.

During the three-day trial in February 1992, a doctor testified that there were indications of injuries consistent with the girl's description of the assault.

Aurelias Marshall looks to his relatives in the gallery following the verdict of Joel Battaglia's murder trial at the Kent County Courthouse in Grand Rapids, Mich., Monday, June 8, 2015.

The tale she told in the trial was specific in terms of where and how she was assaulted. The outline was submitted by adults, she said, but she came by the details honestly.

She said despite her mother's statements that she had no idea that Carter was innocent, the woman said her mother was aware of it all.

Her mother was there for the beatings and the abuse that included making the children eat crayons as punishment, she says.

She said she was locked in a room for the majority of her childhood as her mother and boyfriends smoked crack in the other room. The girl often risked physical violence by looking out a peephole to see what was happening in the rest of the house.

The woman says Marshall was not the first of her mother's boyfriends to sexually abuse her - the first coming at the age of seven or eight.

Related: Victim in wrongful conviction case never talked about the real rapist, mom says

The woman said in the years Carter was going from a teen to a man approaching middle age, she was haunted by the wrongful conviction.

"I felt it was all my fault," the woman said. "My waking up every day was like, 'why am I here? But I had kids to take care of."

As the years went on, she would see Marshall at the store, walking near her home and at other businesses. She does not believe this was an accident, but the killer's way of letting her know that he can always get to her - and the young children to whom she was now a mother.

"I used to see him all the time," she said. "He was a monster."

The woman said she twice went to prosecutors to say that Carter was innocent - official records back this up - but authorities did not believe her.

The woman says she was once told there was DNA evidence to bolster the conviction, although she knew there was none because the assault happened 10 days before it was reported.

The conviction and six to 20-year sentence would be upheld on appeal and Carter was repeatedly denied parole.

It wasn't until late last year when cold case investigators came calling to ask her to tell what she knew about the murder of Joel Battaglia that her story was finally revealed and believed.

Now, Marshall faces life in prison and she feels safe to tell the story.

"Maybe now it's meant to come to light," the woman said.

Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth moved to have the conviction of Carter, now 40, set aside and helped the wrongfully convicted man draft a formal request to have the conviction set aside. That motion is now making its way through the court system.

The woman said finally being believed was the lifting of an incredible burden, but the scars remain.

She says she hopes that the conviction can be set aside without her having to testify again in court - the place where she has suffered so much.

She said she is undergoing therapy to deal with the trauma of her life with Marshall and the anger she carries toward her estranged mother. She wonders why the woman could not find it within herself to simply take the children away.

"I know crack can do some terrible things to a person," the woman said. "But she let that man beat me."

The woman said she lives with the regret of knowing what happened to Carter and she hopes he can find a way to recover his life even as she works to recover hers.

E-mail Barton Deiters: bdeiters@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/GRPBarton or Facebook at facebook.com/bartondeiters.5