This section is reprinted from The Irish Times, September 17, 2008. Author is Maeve Lewis, One in Four. View original link at http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0917/1221599424035.html

We know child sexual abuse remains a huge problem in Irish society; it is time we acted courageously to stop it, writes Maeve Lewis.

AT THE turn of the century, Irish people were shaken by revelations of clerical sexual abuse. It has been very difficult for us to accept that Roman Catholic priests and religious were responsible for harming thousands of children across the country. It has been even more difficult to accept that the church authorities had in many cases known of the abuse, and had acted to protect the institutional church rather than vulnerable children.

The full extent of the scandal is still to emerge as we await the reports of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse and the Dublin Archdiocesan Inquiry. We also await a consistent, transparent child protection structure to be put in place across the Catholic dioceses and congregations.

Five per cent of all Irish children who are sexually abused are harmed by clerics. However, 75 per cent of children who are sexually abused are violated by members of their own family, or by trusted adults known to them in their daily lives. Facing this is our real challenge now.

Although it does not sit easily with our Irish self-image, sexual abuse of children is highly prevalent in this country.

The Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) Report (2002) showed that 23 per cent of Irish men and 30 per cent of Irish women had unwanted sexual experiences in childhood. Naturally, we want to recoil from these harsh statistics, but what they actually mean is that each one of us must know somebody in our intimate circle who was sexually abused as a child.

The costs of sexual abuse are very high. Typically, people suffer years of distress before they seek help. Survivors of sexual abuse have a high incidence of depression and anxiety. Many develop an addiction in an attempt to cope with overwhelming anguish. Had they received help as children, the devastating impact of sexual abuse on their lives could have been avoided.

And the children of today? The truth is that we do not know. The effects of sexual abuse are such that children are shamed and silenced, and most victims do not disclose their experiences until they reach adulthood.

Yet adult survivors routinely tell of the difficulties in attempting to report historic abuse to overstretched HSE staff. If sexual abuse is disclosed within the family, little is available to support families to deal with the enormous fallout. Where psychotherapy is available to adult survivors, the outcomes are very good, and lives can be transformed. But waiting lists for affordable services are lengthy.

It is estimated that only three in one thousand sexual crimes result in a prosecution, with an even smaller number of convictions.

While the Garda has greatly improved its response to people reporting sexual violence, the court system is still experienced by victims as intimidating and traumatising. The unpalatable fact is that sexual offenders can be fairly certain that they will never be called upon to answer for the destruction they have caused.

People are repulsed by sexual offenders and want to see them punished. The reality is that a prison sentence on its own does not protect children, as the likelihood of re-offending on release is very high.

On the other hand, research shows that effective treatment programmes reduce the recidivism rate to one to two per cent. Until we provide rigorous but compassionate treatment for offenders, the cycle of abuse will continue.

Mandatory treatment programmes must be introduced into our prisons, and services for sexual offenders should be available in every town in Ireland.

Our child sexual abuse services are a generation behind the UK, Australian and Canadian systems. To develop our system to international standards demands nothing less than an integrated national response.

We must have a public awareness and prevention campaign, accessible interventions for children and their families, and psychotherapy for the devastated children who are now adults.

We must also provide treatment and support for sexual offenders if their behaviour is to change. And we must address our archaic court system which currently deters victims from seeking redress.

This requires political will and the provision of adequate resources, difficult though that may be in the current climate. It also demands that all government departments, statutory agencies and charities working in the field collaborate and co-operate with each other.

After two decades of public inquiries, and thousands of published recommendations, we are all aware of the extent of the sexual abuse of children in Ireland, and of the failures in our response.

The crucial question is why, as a society, we continue to choose not to act? We can never again pretend that we did not know what was happening.

It is time that we faced reality and dealt boldly and courageously with this open secret at the heart of Irish society. Then childhood sexual abuse could truly become a thing of the past.

• Maeve Lewis is executive director of One in Four. She is a psychotherapist specialising for 20 years in sexual violence.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times