Reported child rapes ‘tip of iceberg’

THE increase in child rape cases reported to the gardaí last year is the “tip of the iceberg” in relation to the true scale of child sexual abuse, a leading children’s charity said yesterday.

Children at Risk in Ireland (CARI) said the 106 cases reported to gardaí in 2009 – up from 82 in 2008 – represented only a fraction of the 2,300 allegations of child sexual abuse reported to the HSE in 2007.

CARI chief executive Mary Flaherty said the HSE had confirmed 719 of these cases and the remaining 1,400 were unconfirmed, but not disproved.