Rights of the child ‘must be paramount’

OUR Constitution must copper-fasten the protection of children from those who would seek to harm them, according to Fergus Finlay, Barnardos chief executive.

“Children must be off limits to adults when it comes to sexual activity. Without in a sense wishing to make a trivial comparison, if you make an illegal right turn, or break the speed limit by five miles per hour, you are guilty of an offence, and no amount of pleading that you made an honest mistake will do you any good.

“It is absurd in that context that an adult can have sex with a 14 or 15-year-old girl and then plead that he thought she was older — and then compound the long-term damage and trauma by reducing the child to the status of a defendant in the witness box,” he said in a submission to the joint committee on the Constitutional amendment on children.