Despite public shock over individual cases of sexual abuse, there's little outcry over our poor health services to tackle the problem, writes Carl O'Brien, Social Affairs Correspondent
AS THE DETAILS of a horrific abuse case were revealed at Roscommon District Court last week, the sense of shock and revulsion across the State was palpable.
It seemed to defy understanding that a mother could not only neglect her six children to an appalling degree but, even worse, force her son to have sex with her on at least four different occasions.
Yet, the grim reality is that the true scale of sexual abuse of children in Ireland is frightening. Each year an average of about 2,500 reports of suspected abuse of young people are made to social services.
A national study on the prevalence of sexual abuse in Ireland – the 2002 Sexual Abuse and Violence in Irelandreport – found more than a quarter of men and women had experienced some level of childhood sexual abuse.
Surveys of treatment programmes in Ireland suggest the number of people with harmful sexual behaviour is in the region of 3,000-plus.
But perhaps the most shocking revelation is that, despite the scale of abuse, there are major gaps in health services which are failing to adequately protect families, assess suspects or treat offenders.
That’s according to a new report being published tomorrow by Nota Ireland, the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers. It gives us the most accurate picture to date of the state of services for people with harmful sexual behaviour. It is based on questionnaires and interviews with almost 100 agencies or professionals in the field of treatment for sex offenders.
What emerges is a system riven with gaps and funding problems, with no nationally recognised standards of assessment or treatment, which is failing to provide proper rehabilitation to many offenders in the community. The quality of services in some areas is so dubious that there are question marks over the validity of official information being provided to judges on risk assessments for sex offenders.
It found, for example, cases of entirely inappropriate practice such as risk assessment tools for adults being used invalidly with adolescents.
For experts like Olive Travers, chairwoman of Nota Ireland, these failings can have profound implications for social workers, families and children at risk.
“It poses serious implications for frontline child protection staff who are required to make real-life decisions about the access of alleged perpetrators to children which are based on the information being provided by assessment and treatment services,” she says.
“The research also shows that the availability of services are patchy throughout the country, with some areas having no access to any service at all. In places where there are existing services these were found, in the main, to be inadequately resourced.”
While sex abusers are quickly demonised by the media, the wider public does not always realise that early, effective services can have a hugely positive effect on those involved in harmful sexual behaviour.
Take young people. One-third of all sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone under the age of 18.
Research shows that about a quarter of these young sex offenders began displaying signs of inappropriate sexual behaviour during childhood, often due to traumas they experienced in their earlier years.
With early and effective treatment, the benefits to young people, their families and society can be dramatic.
Yet, as the Nota report shows, the majority of services providing assessment and treatment for children and adolescents in Ireland reported worryingly low levels of funding and resourcing.
Some well-established units in this area survive without statutory funding and are attempting to meet growing demand with diminishing resources, the report says.
As a result, the false economy of failing to invest in assessment, treatment and residential programmes results in untreated offenders abusing children.
This, inevitably, goes on to cause immense trauma and injury. And it ultimately costs the State in terms of prison for offenders and counselling for victims.
The report’s over-arching recommendation is for a national strategy which would protect the public from sexual harm by providing funding for evidence-based services in a consistent and uniform manner.
At present, it says lines of communication and approaches to treatment between statutory and non-statutory services in this area are not consistent enough.
The HSE’s social work teams, for example, do not have consistent systems in place to track the number of young people accused of having sexually abused.
A national strategy would help provide for more effective, integrated and consistent services, as well as reflecting what is regarded as best practice internationally. It also backs up a key recommendation of the Ferns report, which urged that services be provided in partnership on a multi-agency and multidisciplinary basis.
Such a step doesn’t have to cost the earth. If rolled out across the State, the report estimates it would cost about €3.6 million a year. Small money compared to the estimated cost of sexual abuse to society, which weighs in at about €250 million each year.
Far from sexual abuse being remote and disconnected from our daily lives, research indicates that the vast majority of perpetrators live in the community rather than prison, because they haven’t been reported to gardaí or aren’t serving a custodial sentence. Yet, the public outcry over the lack of services in this area is muted, at best.
As an inquiry into the handling of the Roscommon abuse case may well come to show, without radical changes our child-protection system will continue to fail children, families and the community at large.