Father offered to abuse young daughter online

An allegation that a father offered to abuse his young daughter online is among the horrific cases outlined in the latest report by the Child Care Law Reporting Project.

The father was about to sexually abuse his daughter on a webcam when he was arrested by gardaí.

He was caught when he shared his interest in sexual activity with infants on an internet chat room with a person who was an undercover police officer in another jurisdiction.

When he told the undercover officer that his wife was out shopping and that he would abuse his daughter live on webcam, the police contacted the gardaí, who arrested the man and took the child into care.

The HSE sought an interim care order but the judge ordered a specialist assessment of the child’s disclosures before making his final ruling.

A separate case at a district court in a rural town made care orders for varying lengths of time for seven children aged from two-and-a-half to 17, following allegations of physical and sexual abuse.

The proceedings, which lasted for about eight months, were sparked by an allegation of sex abuse by one girl against her father. When the children were taken into care, medical evidence emerged that another child in the family had been anally raped. He alleged a young relative had committed the offence.

A year earlier, the mother had drawn the attention of the school to the fact this child was being bullied and sexually taunted on the halting site where they lived.

The social work department had been contacted, but the social worker told the court they understood the problem had reduced and there was no further intervention.

The manager of the residential centre where the child was, and where he has to be attended by two adults at all times, said the boy was “one of the most traumatised children I have seen”. This child had told workers in the centre: “I know I will hurt a child.”

The court heard there was no specialist unit for assessing child sex abuse in this part of the country, and none of the children had been assessed.

An application for an interim care order was adjourned in a case where a very young child displayed highly sexualised behaviour in her creche.

A care order that had been granted for a year for a girl raped by her father over many years was renewed by Dublin District Court when it came in for review. Her father was acquitted by a jury in the Central Criminal Court.

The court heard the girl had made numerous attempts at self-harm, including swallowing broken glass and cutting herself.

Seven of the 24 cases published in the report involve allegations or suspicions of child sex abuse.

Another case concerned children from a Traveller family who had been so severely harassed in the flat block where they lived they could not go to school.

Carol Coulter, director of the Child Care Law Reporting Project, said there were a “number of themes and issues common to most of these cases”, including the fact that, in some parts of the country, there is no specialist unit for assessing child sex abuse; difficulties in accessing risk assessment for parents, and in some cases there was evidence that children had been exposed to prolonged neglect before sex abuse allegations prompted intervention.