Fewer than 15 per cent of clients at One in Four, the sexual abuse victim support organisation, decide to make a complaint to the gardaí.
The organisation said the biggest barrier to engaging with the criminal justice system for abuse victims is fear of the criminal trial.
“Our clients are routinely humiliated and re-traumatised by the accepted practices and protocols of the criminal trial,” said One in Four executive director Maeve Lewis.
She said the organisation would like to see the law changed so that alleged perpetrators do not have the right to cross-examine victims. She also said that adult victims should be able to testify over video.
Ms Lewis was speaking at the launch of One in Four’s annual report which showed the organisation provided counselling to 116 adult survivors of child sexual abuse and to 40 families in 2015.
She said 40 per cent of their clients had been sexually abused in their own families. Of the others, 11 per cent were abused in their communities, 22 per cent in the Catholic Church, 15 per cent by strangers and 11 per cent were sexually abused by multiple abusers.
Family members
Ms Lewis said there has been an increase in the number of complaints received concerning abuse within the family. She said these cases can be particularly difficult because very often the reaction of the other family members is to dismiss what the victim says and instead support their abuser.
Ms Lewis said One in Four had worked with 38 sex offenders and 19 wives and partners. She said the issue of 18- to 24-year-old men who began their journey into offending by viewing online images of child abuse was “a big train coming down the tracks”.
She said programmes which help non-convicted abusers confront the harm they have caused and live lives free of sexually harmful behaviour are important because fewer than 5 per cent of offenders are ever convicted for sexual abuse.
She said that in 2015, child and family agency Tusla began to put in place retrospective allegation teams which has improved the way notifications are dealt with.
“We made 49 notifications to Tusla in 2015 but most of these were deemed to be ’unfounded’. While we appreciate the difficulty social workers face in assessing retrospective allegations, this does imply that many credible allegations will not be pursued, and children will be put at risk.”
