The abuse of alcohol by young people is leading to consensual sexual abuse, Sr Veronica Mangan, director of the Aislinn adolescent treatment centre, will say today at a seminar in the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) to mark alcohol awareness week.
She will tell the seminar that young women are having sex when they are very drunk and their judgment is impaired. Afterwards, they may not be able to remember if they consented or not.
"It is abusive to themselves really and it carries horrendous hurt, pain and shame afterwards," she said yesterday.
Kate Cassidy, HSE health promotion officer, will highlight the rising incidence of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which occurs when women continue drinking while pregnant.
She will point to the increase in alcohol consumption by young women and say that alcohol can cause a range of disorders in the foetus including heart and skeletal malformations and facial deformities.
"It's important to remember that it is 100 per cent preventable by not drinking while pregnant. But if babies are born with it, it's a life-long condition," she said yesterday.
Many women are pregnant for several weeks without knowing it so the best advice, she said, was to "stop as soon as you realise you are pregnant".
Yesterday WIT called on other colleges to agree on the assignation of a single week each year as Alcohol Awareness Week.
"We urge all other third-level institutions to make this a national annual event," said Louis Nevin, institute nurse at WIT and organiser of the event. "It should be like Science Week or Irish Heart Week. It would have much more impact if other colleges came on board," she said.
Dr Niamh Murphy of the Centre for Health Behaviour Research at WIT said colleges needed to do more to address the problem.
"At third level, right across the country, we need to take responsibility for offering alternatives to the traditional alcohol-fuelled student social calendar," she said.
"There is too much emphasis placed on coinciding fun-filled student events such as Rag Week with alcohol-related activities and this needs to be addressed."
She said more students needed to be educated on the negative effects of binge drinking on their learning and health.
This is the third year of the event at Waterford. As well as today's seminar and workshops later this week, there will be a debate entitled "Controlling Ireland's drink culture - worth the effort?" tomorrow morning. Students will also perform a new drama, Alcohol, by Pat Daly.
