CAMPAIGNERS will be encouraged by the revelation that Health Minister Mary Harney is actively considering ways of streamlining the State’s response to Ireland’s growing crisis of rape and sexual assault.

GARDAÍ and police in the North have vowed to work with customs on either side of the Border in a concerted clampdown on smuggling and organised crime, Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy has said.

SOME rape victims have to wait up to 11 hours to be examined because of a shortage of doctors trained to gather forensic evidence.

THE Rape Crisis Network of Ireland is hopeful of securing additional funding for services dealing with sexual violence following a meeting with Finance Minister Brian Cowen in Dublin yesterday.

THE appalling crime of rape is revealed in all its horror by an exhibition of posters which opened in Dublin yesterday with the aim of heightening public awareness of this most heinous of offences.

THERE will be no refuge for many victims of domestic violence who will flee their homes with their children over Christmas.

Niamh Nolan

THE fact that some rape victims can endure a harrowing 11-hour delay before undergoing forensic examination is a damning comment on the inadequacy of our response to their plight, in a community where sex crimes have been swept under the carpet for decades.

A VERY special exhibition that bombards the viewer with colour before revealing the bleakness and pain underneath is on show in the Axis Arts centre in Ballymun, Dublin.

THE former prison governor who indecently assaulted a young girl 28 times showed no remorse, his victim claimed yesterday.

RAPE, serious sex offences and gun crime have jumped in the first half of this year, official statistics show.

Michael Brennan

AT least one victim of drug-assisted rape or sexual abuse contacts the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) every week.

RAPE Crisis groups last night criticised proposals by Justice Minister Michael McDowell to allow rape cases be heard in local courts.

RAPE — no matter if the victim is male or female — is a most heinous crime.