No country for small children

The Children’s Ombudsman, Emily Logan, has expressed serious concerns about the mishandling by State agencies of the case of an 11-year-old girl who was subjected to repeated rape, sometimes at knife-point.

When the victim’s mother, in the wake of the first complaint, asked that her daughter be examined by a female doctor, this led to a stand-off with the HSE centring on the HSE’s judgement that the mother was “difficult”.

Seven years after the victim’s initial report to the gardaí, and only then because of the direct intervention of the Children’s Ombudsman, a deeply-traumatised child has received only one session of therapeutic care from the HSE.