Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With respect to the strategy and how it relates to awareness and targeted awareness initiatives with young people and minors, I acknowledge that it is currently in draft form. We also had the benefit of an additional consultation. We await with particular interest the implementation plan, which will be published alongside it. There is material in there that may be sufficient, although that depends on how it is interpreted in the implementation plan. There are a number of welcome inclusions in this strategy, which had been completely omitted from previous strategies. This is particularly the case for the area of prevention. There is an explicit acknowledgement of looking at the impact of looking at pornography, for example, particularly on young boys. This is extremely welcome.

There is a direct acknowledgement of the need to connect with policies like the anti-bullying strategy, which is currently under review. I am one of several representatives on the steering committee for that. There is the opportunity there to do the kind of fundamental structural work that Dr. Saidléar referred to, regarding identifying a baseline of a gender-unequal society and then looking at it in an intersectional way, where there is additional discrimination, prejudice and vulnerability that may be due to sexuality, gender identity, race or ethnicity. The baseline, however, is the gender-unequal society. Unfortunately, so far, many of our strategies that can directly influence better outcomes for gender equality start with this gender-neutral position. This kind of signposting is valuable because it gives us the mandate to continue to press for recognising, with our eyes open, that this is the society we are now born into and this is the incremental work under way. There is also the commitment with the relationships and sexuality education, RSE.

Therefore, there are tools to work with. There have, however, been missed opportunities concerning looking sensitively and carefully at prevalence data regarding the intersection in this regard. Our research survey of 18 to 25-year-olds added retroactive questions, which told us that of the one-fifth of young women who were abused by the age of 25, that 51% of them had been underage. That process involves interviewing women for whom that is an experience of some years past. The real situation currently, therefore, requires indepth studies and that can dovetail with the likes of the anti-bullying strategy, where there is an urgent need to consider not just the modes of bullying, because there is focus on cyberbullying, etc., but also the content, in respect of who is targeted and what is the underlying focus. Is it sexist, is it sexual harassment or is it racist? There are great opportunities there, which, hopefully, will be followed through.

Regarding the family law courts, recommendation 39 and whether legislation is required, I do not know that legislation is necessarily required, because we already have legislation in this regard that we are not really meeting our obligations on, such as on the voice of the child, for example. The Domestic Violence Act 2018 had guidance to say that where a crime is committed against somebody and the relationship is one where that person is a current or former partner, that should be considered an aggravating and not mitigating factor. Regarding our experience with the courts, research is under way, funded by the Department of Justice, to examine the siloing effect and disconnect between the criminal courts and the family law courts. We must explore if there are ways to resolve that. There is also inconsistency in this context, where matters in criminal proceedings are, in some cases, allowed to be heard in in cameraproceedings, but the existence of a safety order in place is not. What is involved here is guidance and structures, and part of addressing that issue would examine whether legislation is required or only procedures and guidance.

We must also look at the issue of the real lack of understanding of what coercive control is. I refer specifically to custody and access. A great body of research shows that if coercive control is being exerted against an adult member of the household, the non-abusing parent,de facto, then that it is also being exerted against children. Often, it is being done to further target and harm the adult, but it is also very damaging and harmful to the children. This point is not well understood, and it should be an assumption that if there is abuse against the mother in that situation, that the children, by virtue of being in that environment, are not witnesses. They are also victims and survivors, and that is not being well understood. Now that we have the legislation on coercive control, it supports a mindset shift to look not at single acts of violence, criminal damage or threats, but at the pattern of such behaviour. Further work remains to be done in this regard.

There was also a question about the Judicial Council. I am pleased to say we have had contact with the council specifically on the understanding of coercive control and how that can show up in the family law courts. We are collaborating with the Judicial Council on supporting an input as part of its mandate to initiate and then invest in peer-to-peer training on how coercive control can show up. I am pleased to note that. I commend the director who has been appointed, Judge Mary Rose Gearty, on her leadership on this endeavour. I understand the Judicial Council is now getting greater resources to drive this initiative forward. I also acknowledge there is a gap here in this regard compared to many other jurisdictions in that we do not have a judicial training college. Even Northern Ireland has such a college, but we do not. Extensive work is being done from a baseline of limited structures to facilitate this initiative, and we are optimistic that there is more work to be done in this regard as well.