6th September 2002
Recently I was in Cambridgeshire and passed through many of those lovely little villages like Soham. Really, it would be hard to call them towns. They have small, intimate centres where everyone I passed on the streets seemed to know everyone else. Safe, cosy places.
This, I suppose, was why we were all so appalled and transfixed by the grim events in Soham eventually leading to the discovery of two little bodies. The children were little, but not that little. They were ten years old. Many's the ten year old I have sent off around the corner to get some milk or bread and sent them alone. These girls were together when they went around the corner to shop for sweets.
An increasing number of parents give their children mobile phones so that contact is always possible. Jessica had a mobile phone with her when she went out. What parents could do more on a sunny Sunday afternoon to protect their child? A safe situation, two children together and a modern method of communication to Mum and Dad.
Children are warned to be careful of strangers, but it is in what should be the safest of circumstances, the home, that most of the abuse and murder of children takes place. And, as it looks may be the case in Soham, too, vile deeds on children are perpetuated by those they know and trust.
This year's report from CARI (Children at Risk in Ireland Foundation) has just been circulated. The title on the cover shows a childish drawing of a little girl and written underneath "I realise now it 's not my fault". Some people, when the Stay Safe Programme was introduced into primary schools, objected on the grounds that children might feel obliged to report on their own parents ! Nothing about the abuse of their roles as parents if they, indeed, were the perpetrators. The Stay Safe Programme, the then Minister for Education, Michael Woods told me when I asked him about it in May, is not in all primary schools yet, only about 70%. Why is it not in all?
Marie Keenan, who is a most respected psychologist is reported to have told a conference of priests at Maynooth that 99% of sex offenders when released cannot get work and, indeed, frequently cannot find anywhere to live. This, of course, is very tough but we know that few abusers attend or, indeed are able to attend, remedial courses in prison and we are also told there is a high level of re-offending.
But should we concentrate all our efforts on warning children about predators? Should we devote more time to preventative education with those who may contemplate abusing children? When the Sex Offenders Bill went through the Seanad last year I supported Minister Mary Hanafin's view that there was a distinction between sexual activity taking place between young people of a broadly similar age and cases where one person is significantly older than the other or where an abuse of authority or trust may be involved. As she said "Child abuse is indicative of the existence of an unequal relationship of power between the child and the older person but that would not be the case where the parties involved are teenage peers". Those who abuse children frequently describe the child as the initiator of the sexual activity. This is an absurd reversal of roles.
It is a fact that the abuse of young children in about one third of reported cases is by an adolescent. At present there is a case before the courts where a fourteen year old is accused of raping an eight year old. My knowledge of the content of the courses given on sex in our secondary schools is not complete because the course varies depending on the ethos of the school but it is to be hoped that the absolute unacceptability of experimenting with young children is carefully explained. My memory is still fresh of the distress of a teenage friend who told me of the abuse she was subjected to by an older brother. But that was in the good old days when nothing unpleasant happened !
A little boy of four was sexually assaulted as he played in his back garden in Dundalk. There has been the attempted abduction by two men of a fifteen year old schoolgirl in Galway. At least in the bad new days we are talking about these grave events. A child has to be safe to play in his garden and a fifteen year old cannot expect to need an escort to go to school. Sex with a child is never acceptable. The child is not in a position go give permission for such activity.
Like many of you I pass children begging in the streets of Dublin and elsewhere. Some of these children speak little or no English. How easy it would be, if one wanted to do so, to abduct one of these little ones. Like me, I am sure many of you talk to them, try to find out where their parents are or find a nearby garda. When we are concerned about the abduction, abuse, murder of children all children must be included, not just middle class children from nice homes. I read of a couple in England who were going to micro-chip their daughter to improve traceability. I read also about a microchipped Brent goose who was eventually traced to a Canadian freezer. Having a microchip would not have helped the little boy in the garden in Dundalk. He wasn't taken anywhere.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
