The absence of a clear strategy for treating known sex offenders is scandalous, writes Harry Ferguson
The voice of the child-sexual abuser was unmistakably Irish. Martin, as he called himself to preserve his anonymity, was speaking openly on a BBC Radio 4 programme about how he had sexually abused children and how the residential treatment programme at the Wolvercote Clinic in Epsom, Surrey, had helped him. He had even begun to feel that he wouldn't offend again.
Martin is a priest who ended up having treatment in England having abused children in Ireland. If the issues raised about how to protect children and respond to victims of clerical abuse - and, let us not forget, abuse by other types of offender - weren't serious enough, there is an urgent need for a coherent strategy on what to do with the offenders.
We urgently need to go beyond the understandable fears, revulsion and desire for revenge to seek out rational remedies. For as much as we would like it to be otherwise, the one certainty here is that sex offenders aren't going to go away and that unless adequate treatment is offered, they will reoffend again and again. The typical profile of child-sexual abusers who go untreated is that they commit hundreds of crimes.
The alarming fact is that as the sheer scale of the problem of sexual abuse and increased number of known offenders grows, the treatment facilities available to respond to Irish offenders are totally inadequate, some are even in decline.
The Wolvercote Clinic in Surrey, which treated Martin, closed in August. Independent of the Catholic Church, it was run by the Lucy Faithful Foundation, a child protection charity. Churches (not just Catholic, but of all faiths) were the Wolvercote Clinic's third highest source of referrals after probation and social services departments. Plans to relocate it from Horton Hospital in Epsom, which was being sold by the department of health, to a new site in Surrey had to be abandoned because of protests by residents who feared for their children's safety (spurred on by a Conservative MP and the News of the World).
Although the people running Wolvercote emphasised that they always took residents' concerns into account when choosing a site, their attempt to relocate the clinic was ultimately defeated by the myths about sex offenders, fuelled by sensationalist media reporting.
In the seven years it operated from Horton Hospital none of the 305 men assessed and treated - they were monitored 24 hours a day - harmed local children. As Mr Donald Findlater, manager of the Wolvercote Clinic, emphasised: "Most sex offenders are not likely to be so completely compulsive and out of control that they're going to break out of 24-hour supervision and abuse someone at random." In any case, 80 per cent of children are abused by someone they know. Thus local residents should be more worried about their relatives, friends and neighbours than abuse by strangers.
Given that the Wolvercote Clinic was one of the few residential clinics of its kind; that it worked independently of the Catholic Church in a manner directly accountable to children and the state; and that it treated many Irish clerics, its closure reduces significantly the option of residential treatment for Irish child-sexual abusers. And all the research shows that intensive residential programmes produce the best outcomes in terms of stopping reoffending. Thus, even more sexual abusers are going to end up in the community under less supervision and no less dangerous than they ever were. A variety of treatments are needed, ranging from residential facilities to work with high to medium-risk offenders, to non-residential for medium to lower-risk. While Ireland has no residential facility, some important work is already being done, most notably with clerics by the Grenada Institute in Dublin, a non-residential service.
But despite the best efforts of front-line professionals to try to get the Government and Churches to do more, the absence of resources and a clear strategy for responding to known sex offenders in Ireland is scandalous.
NOTHING exemplifies this more than what is, or isn't, being done in prisons where, since the 1990s, only between 10 and 20 of the 300 imprisoned abusers have been treated at any one time. Even in the UK, which has led the world in establishing sex offender treatment programmes, of the 5,600 sex offenders currently in prison, only 839 completed treatment last year. For the fourth year running, the UK prison service has failed to meet its target of aiming to treat around a fifth of incarcerated sexual abusers. But at least it has targets.
Treating sex offenders is not popular, and the paedophile priest is probably the least likely figure on whom the public would support investing such time and money. It is crucial, therefore, that the issue is handled sensitively and debates are based on hard information about the real benefits to child protection of treating offenders, rather than fear and myth.
If ever there was a cause for clear, well-informed political leadership, this is it. The Catholic Church, too, has a key role to play in showing moral leadership and support for the development of transparent and accountable treatment services in this State.
A clearly articulated State-led strategy for dealing with clerical offenders is needed to impose accountability at every stage; from reporting of suspected abusers to the gardaí, to prosecution, treatment, alternatives to custody, and long-term management of offenders, setting out clear expectations and procedures on issues such as laicisation.
Whether laicised or not, there is also a need to develop services which will assist with the re-integration of offenders in the community - like the befriending projects pioneered in Canada. Trained volunteers talk, listen to and carry out social activities with the offenders on their release from prison or residential treatment to support them in staying safe and becoming as "normal" a citizen as possible.
Evaluations of such schemes show that because they reduce social isolation, they help to reduce danger and reoffending. The mere suggestion of starting more treatment facilities in this State raises the prospect of the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. We have to be clear that the treatment of sex offenders is first and foremost an issue of good child protection and ask ourselves this: Would we rather have child-sexual abusers going (or remaining) underground and roaming free without any attempts at reforming them, or is it safer to know where they are and be assured that something meaningful is being done with them?
As the father of a two-year-old girl, I would rather see a treatment facility being located in my neighbourhood, because it feels safer knowing that offenders are accounted for and being worked with, than having to live with knowledge of the dangers of the unknown. These are agonising choices for truly painful times, which leave no real choice other than to find an Irish solution to this tragic problem within Ireland itself.
• Harry Ferguson is Professor of Social Work at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His most recent book is a study of child protection practices in Ireland: Keeping Children Safe: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Promotion of Welfare (A&A Farmar).