Today Martin Pistorius drives a car, holds down a job and is planning a family with his loving wife.

After eight terrifying years trapped inside his own body unable to speak or move, the ‘Ghost Boy’ has made a truly miraculous recovery.

Yet the true depth of what he endured has never before been disclosed, not even in his best-selling book, which is once again climbing the charts.

Because, as he reveals today with shocking candour, his years of waking nightmare were further poisoned by physical and sexual abuse whenever his exhausted parents left him in the hands of a care home.

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Ghost boy: Martin Pistorius, pictured with his wife Joanna, suffered years of physical and sexual abuse at hands of care home staff

Speaking for the first time about the shameful episode, Martin says he still has flashbacks and nightmares about the mistreatment - to the extent that he only rarely visits his native South Africa, where it took place.

For Martin, a web designer from Essex, the land of his birth is forever tainted by illness and cruelty.

‘I would dread it whenever my parents told me they were taking me to the care home because I knew what would happen and I had no way of letting them know the agonies I’d suffer,’ he told The Mail on Sunday.

‘It was horrific. Of course they felt dreadful when they eventually found out and my father Rodney reported what happened but of course everyone denied it and as a result I have never had justice.

‘People in the care home would pull my hair making my eyes water, the metal spoon would crash against my teeth as they forced food into my mouth.

‘When it made me sick they’d shout and scream at me. I knew if I cried it would only make it worse.

‘I would be forced to drink scalding tea or fed until I was sick, then I’d be slapped, shouted at, made to feel worthless, then would come the sexual attacks from women who were supposed to be looking after me.

‘One woman would come into the room and straddle me and simulate sex with me and touch me inappropriately. Nothing made me feel more powerless, I longed to run away’.

It was a lesser ordeal, maybe, but he was also forced to watch endless re-runs of children’s cartoon Barney the Dinosaur, which itself became a form of torture.

Martin, front, with his family in the last picture before the illness struck and left him in a virtual coma

Loving family: Martin and his father Rodney as the mystery illness began to take hold when he was just 12 years of age

‘Each day I’d count down the minutes until it was over and I was 24 hours closer to going home.’

Martin’s father tried to take action when they eventually realised what had been happening but they denied it and said there was no evidence.

Martin’s miraculous recovery was recounted in his book Ghost Boy, first serialised in The Mail on Sunday.

He became ill at 12, developing sore throat that soon became a mystery illness. In the months that followed his mind and body broke down and he became trapped in the shell of child he had once been.

Martin, pictured left, was also forced to watch endless re-runs of children’s cartoon Barney the Dinosaur, pictured right, which itself became a form of torture

As his illness, which is believed to have been a degenerative neurological disorder, took hold, Martin became completely unresponsive. Doctors told his devastated parents to simply wait for him to die.

Ultimately, Martin became utterly unresponsive. Yet at the age of 16, he suddenly began to become aware of his surroundings and by the age of 19 his mind was fully intact. But, frighteningly, he was still unable to communicate.

‘You have no idea how frightening it was. The stark reality that I was going to spend the rest of my life like that, totally alone,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t make a sign or a sound to let anyone know I’d become aware again. I was invisible, a ghost boy.’

Martin’s miraculous recovery was recounted in his book Ghost Boy. Hollywood is now fighting over his story to make it into a movie

Such were the depths of his family’s despair in those early years, that his agonised mother Joan, 64, told him she hoped he’d die before then trying to kill herself.

Abandoned by doctors who were baffled by his mysterious illness, Martin regained full consciousness at 25.

Martin met his wife Joanne, now a social worker, on the internet. They talked by email and, before long, she asked him to visit her in Britain. They married in 2009.

Life partners: Martin and Joanna shortly after their engagement

Now, as he sits with his wife in a country manor hotel near his home in Harlow, speaking with the aid of a voice synthesiser, Martin admits the continued interest in his story is at times overwhelming.

Martin, says proudly: ‘Getting a degree was never something I could imagine happening. I had stopped my schooling at 12, I had no memory of anything – basic maths, the alphabet – but I went along to an open day at the University of Hertfordshire.

‘They told me to write about why I wanted to study Computer Science and to my shock and amazement they offered me a place unconditionally’.

Despite not being able to hold a pen at the time, he applied for a scholarship from Google and fought off competition from Oxford and Cambridge students to secure a grant to help pay for his studies.

‘I am by nature quite a shy, reserved person and but I made new friends at university, we were all geeks together. I learned a lot and grew an enormous amount as a person, I felt more confident and it was as if I was able to regain a big part of my life that I’d missed out on.

‘But it wasn’t easy. I was juggling full-time studies with working and a five hour daily bus commute. And on top of that I had to learn all the basic maths– like multiplication and algebra – that my memory had erased’.

Martin admits that graduating in July 2013 was one of the proudest days of his life.

Milestone: Martin and Joanna on their wedding day in 2009. The happy couple has set up home in Hertfordshire and now rarely returns to his native South Africa

‘The ceremony in St Alban’s Cathedral was amazing, my parents flew over from South Africa and I was even asked to speak on behalf of the other graduates. It was very emotional for all of us, we could never have believed I could succeed like that’.

Martin’s next milestone was learning to drive and in 2012 he went for an assessment to determine if he’d be safe on the road.

‘It took a while to find an instructor who could teach me to drive an adapted car so I studied for my theory test in the meantime and passed first time. My first time scared me initially, the closest I had come to driving was controlling my electric wheelchair and I was terrified that if I wasn’t properly in control I could injure someone.

Martin, pictured with wife Joanna, says he would like to be played by Matt Damon if his story is turned into a movie

‘But my instructor told me I was a natural and took to it like a duck to water and after 40 lessons I passed my test in October 2013, I was ecstatic. My confidence has built and now I drive all over the country which has helped me build up my computer consultancy business and given me a freedom once unimaginable to me’.

His book is enjoying renewed popularity and has once again reached number 5 in The New York Times best sellers list.

With 40 rival Hollywood film makers competing for the rights to his story, it looks as though his life will be immortalised on screen, too.

Determined to build a new future, he and Joanne are now planning a family, something they had initially ruled out. ‘She is the love of my life and perhaps, selfishly, we didn’t want to share each other with anyone else.

‘But now I’ve finished studying and we are in a better position financially and professionally and we would love to have a family of our own. We are a little older now but we hope it may happen, we will just have to see’.

The couple hope that with Hollywood knocking at their door they may eventually be able to move out of their small flat but like everything else in his life, Martin takes each new day in his stride.

And his sense of humour has never waned. Asked who might play them on screen he confesses Matt Damon and Cameron Diaz are their favourites. ‘Anyone good looking, obviously’, he jokes.