A decade ago, barrister Constance Briscoe became one of the UK's first black women judges.

She is the picture of middle class respectability, admired by both friends and family for having juggled her career with raising two children.

But few realised how carefully she had kept her painful childhood locked away. Now, in her new book, Ugly, Constance reveals the horrendous abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, who would beat her, forced her to sleep in urine-soaked sheets and starved her.

As a little girl she became so desperate that she took herself off to Social Services to ask if she could be put into a children's home. They declined and told her to go back home to south London, but never checked up on her - after all, her mother, Carmen, already had a good parental record, having adopted one child and having six of her own.

Constance attempted suicide by downing a bottle of bleach, diluted with tap water. "I chose Domestos because Domestos kills all known germs and my mother had for so long told me that I was a germ. I felt very sick, happy and sad. I was happy because, if the bleach worked, I would die."

She was bitterly disappointed when she woke up.

Updated: 16:27 Friday, January 27, 2006