Sex abuse not cited in first State inquiry

NO reference was made to sexual abuse in the State’s first official document referring to non-accidental injury of children, the Inquiry into Child Abuse heard yesterday.

Issued by the Department of Health in March 1977, the four-page memo contained a checklist to identify physical abuse cases and what steps should be taken.

The previous April an Irish expert committee had reported to the department on non-accidental injury in the wake of British girl Maria Colwell’s killing by her stepfather.

The experts estimated that there were between 300 and 400 Irish cases of non-accidental injury of children each year, based on the figures in other countries.

Yesterday, principal in the department’s childcare legislation unit Mary McLoughlin, gave evidence to the inquiry. The unit is responsible for dealing with adult victims of past abuse in residential institutions.

Until the 1980s, she said the majority of the social work on the ground was provided by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) and before that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), which went back to the end of the 19th century.

Ms McLoughlin agreed that the question of child sexual abuse emerged with the development of rape crisis centres in the early 1980s.

In parallel with this development came the knowledge that these centres were dealing with a growing number of people who had been abused as children.

Official guidelines on non-accidental injury to children, issued in 1983, made the first reference to the existence of sexual abuse.

“It wasn’t that there was a specific case or even a series of specific cases,” said the witness.

Coincidentally, the Irish Association of Social Workers held a conference in 1983 on child sexual abuse, identifying the need to carry out a study of the problem.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties set up a working party, which included people involved in the rape crisis centres.

Young women going to the rape crisis centres had reported they had been sexually abused as children.

As a result, units for children were set up in the two Dublin children’s hospitals.