PAC Hearings: Report on foster care family sex abuse cannot be published

A harrowing HSE report into decades of horrendous sexual abuse of up to 40 children with severe intellectual disabilities — including some who were mute — by a foster care family cannot be published for legal reasons, senior health service officials have claimed.

The HSE director general, Tony O’Brien, yesterday told the Public Accounts Committee the graphiccase — previously the subject of PAC claims a “clique of HSE managers” attempted to cover up what happened — has been blocked from publication by gardaí and lawyers due to the impact it could have on ongoing investigations.

As previously reported by the Irish Examiner, the report relates to abuse from the 1980s until 2008 by one foster care family in the South-East, who allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulted a large number of children and teenagers in their care and made some live in cubby holes.