Lack of laws on abuser data hinders child safety

THE absence of laws to allow the sharing of “soft information” on paedophiles is severely hampering child protection, the country’s top children’s watchdog has warned.

Geoffrey Shannon, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, said his fourth report was a damning indictment of failed care for youngsters across state agencies.

Issues highlighted in the report were homelessness, child protection guidelines, criminality, mental health and prostitution.

In the report, Mr Shannon calls for tough new laws to criminalise grooming of children and paying for sex and hit out at the lack of access to soft information on potential abusers between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the gardaí.

“Arguably, statutory agencies such as the HSE are not adhering to their duties and regrettably the law is not assisting them to do so,” he said. “The failure to regulate the exchange of soft information severely compromises the protection of children in the state.”

Mr Shannon expressed concern that joint interviewing, by Gardaí and social workers, of young victims of sex abuse is the “exception rather than the rule”.

The report said interviewing by separate agencies can cause trauma and upset for a child which could be avoided by joint interviewing.

Mr Shannon said, from a legal perspective, limiting the number of times a child is interviewed also reduces the potential for the type of contamination of a child’s recollection of events that could lead to the failure to secure a conviction.

Concern was also expressed at a “marked increase” in the number applications for access to abuse complainant’s medical and counselling records in sexual assault cases.

Because of this, there are fears that there may be a decline in those seeking counselling and therapy, or indeed reporting sexual abuse as a result.

Mr Shannon said Ireland also urgently required legislation governing the issue of disclosure and that the findings of other jurisdictions should be considered, as well as the need to balance the complainant’s privacy with the accused’s right to a fair trial.

Mr Shannon also ordered a “full and comprehensive” review of the Youth Homelessness Strategy to ascertain how it has been implemented throughout the HSE regions, and the manner in which each child was dealt.

The report says a 24-hour out-of-hours social work service must be set up — and if not, some other mechanism must be found to deal with out-of-hours cases as it is “unsafe and inappropriate” that vulnerable children must go to garda stations in the evening or night to get help.

In relation to young people’s mental health, the report says a “detailed code of practice” on admission to and treatment of children within mental health institutions should be published.

The report points out that Ireland has one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the European Union, at 15.7 per 100,000 of 15–24 year olds.

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald said it was of “particular concern” that, despite commitments by the previous government, no draft legislation had been prepared to put the Children First guidelines on a statutory footing.

“This will be a key priority for me as minister,” she said. “And I am pleased to say that substantial work has been done to progress this in the past weeks. I will be outlining further details of these proposals very shortly.”