Racial profiling had major role in Garda handling of Roma cases

Racial profiling played a major part in the Garda handling of two cases in which Roma children were wrongly removed from their parents last October because of unfounded fears that they had been abducted.

In the case of Child A, a two-year-old boy from Athlone, the fact that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed child did not look typically Roma was key to raising doubts about his parentage and wrongly inflated the importance and urgency of other questions gardaí had about his identity.

Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan concluded: “The readiness to believe Child A may have been abducted exceeded the evidence available to An Garda Síochána. This was tied inextricably to the fact that Child A’s family is Roma.” In the case of Child T, a seven-year-old girl from Tallaght, Ms Logan concluded there were sufficient doubts about the child’s identity to give gardaí reasonable grounds for removing her from her parents, but the fact that she was held in care after those doubts were cleared up pointed to racial profiling.