HSE failures - A child betrayed

It is completely unacceptable that it should take two months for the HSE to find a female medical specialist to examine an 11-year-old girl who claimed to have been violently raped on several occasions.

Had the Children’s Ombudsman not brought this disturbing case to light, it might well have remained under the carpet, thus escaping the attention of a public troubled again and again by the appalling failure of overpaid officials to protect vulnerable children.

Not alone was the girl in question not given therapeutic support, the HSE even failed to appoint a social worker in this deeply upsetting case where the child had been severely abused.

Compounding the litany of failure and negligence, it is particularly alarming that the DPP decided not to mount a criminal prosecution in this most disquieting case of a child betrayed.