11th April 2002
Ann O'Donnell began talking and writing about rape in the late 70s. This was a word almost unmentioned in Ireland at the time and cases before the Courts were few and far between.
Monica McWeeney, affectionately known as Tuffet, and I were on the council of the then Irish Medical Association. Tuffet was very anxious that something should be done to ensure that the forensic evidence in rape cases which is collected by doctors was of as high a standard as possible. Dr. Maureen Smith, a forensic scientist at the Public Laboratories, produced a kit suitable for use at examinations of the victims of alleged rape and George Henry, then Master of the Rotunda, with the agreement of the Department of Health set up the Sexual Assault and Treatment Unit at the Rotunda.
Moira Woods was appointed to run the unit and we all sat back and waited for the cases to come in. And come in they did, but they were not really the cases any of us had expected.
I worked in the Rotunda at the time and after the Sexual Assault Unit had been opened a few weeks there was a remarkable change in the clientele in the outpatients. There were children, boys and girls from about seven to fourteen in the OPD, accompanied by anxious looking women, not their mothers. Well, to cut a long story short, these were, of course, teachers and social workers with children they thought were being sexually abused but for whom there had been no place to bring them before the opening of the unit.
I don't know how many children Moira saw before it was agreed that units specially for children should be opened both in Temple Street Children's Hospital and in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, but she must have helped many in the years they attended the Rotunda unit.
No one who knows us would accuse either Tuffet or me of coming down in the last shower of rain but with all the revelations of child sex abuse before us now which were taking place then let us remind ourselves how slow we in the medical profession were to realise what was going on. And I don't think we were covering it up. We just didn't think about it, a sad mistake.
Not having worked much with children I can think of only one case, in retrospect, where I probably missed a case of sexual abuse. When I was doing the obligatory stint in paediatrics two middle class little sisters, aged about nine and ten, were admitted for investigation of enuresis. In hospital there were no wet beds, but when their mother came in to collect them after all investigations proved negative she told me that, amazingly, their eight year old sister at home had started wetting her bed while the others were in hospital. Back home went the girls and the bed wetting began again. A few weeks later I was alone with one of them in the outpatients and I asked her why she was wetting the bed. "It's better to have the bed wet", she replied, said no more and, fool that I was, I did realise that a wet bed might deter something else happening.
Most sexual abuse of children is by a family member. In all that is being said about the grim extent of clerical sexual abuse of children this must not be forgotten. What has really horrified people is that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy knew so much about what was occurring and continued to hide serial sexual abusers.
The Residential Institution Redress Bill, 2001 has gone through both Houses of the Oireachtas. When it came to the Seanad I succeeded in getting an amendment to one section. Included under the Bill were children who had been admitted to hospitals due to a physical or mental incapacity. The Minister agreed to include children admitted for mental illness as well.
During the past few years I have had a considerable amount of contact with the survivors of physical and sexual abuse in institutions usually run on behalf of the state by religious orders. While their stories are now much more in the public arena I don't think any of those who were sent to adult psychiatric institutions have yet come forward. These now young adults' stories are some of the worst I have heard and the medical and nursing professions do not always come out of them well. There are many terrible stories still to be told. And what is going to happen about mandatory reporting ? It was first recommended by Judge Catherine McGuinness in the Kilkenny Incest investigation more than a decade ago.
That more than one cleric who was a serial sex abuser was employed as chaplain of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children must mean that I wasn't the only dumb one working in paediatrics. But what is truly shocking is that these priests' supervisors knew what they were doing and did not report them to the civil authorities.
Canon Law is about the internal operations of the Roman Catholic Church and how it affects its affairs. Canon Law should never be cited as protecting a priest against crimes in civil society. A recent poll here described child sexual abuse as the most serious crime in the state, such was the disquiet about it in most people's minds it even superseded murder. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy needs to show the Irish public that it is co-operating fully with George Birmingham's investigation.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
