Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman for facilitating this Topical Issue debate and the Minister for Justice and Equality for coming before the House. I ask her to discuss the apparent failure by the Garda and HSE properly to investigate the appalling abuse of an individual, Anna Bubula.

The circumstances surrounding the case were covered comprehensively in yesterday's Irish Examiner, as the Minister may have read, in a report by Michael Clifford. The photographs alone are horrific and not for the faint-hearted, and reveal an appalling abuse and assault. The article itemises a series of apparent failures by the authorities in the case. There was an apparent failure by medical staff to report an allegation of rape to the gardaí. It was alleged that gardaí did not follow up on the case despite having attended at the scene when an ambulance was called. There was no record of an arrest of the suspect at the scene. No interpreter was present when the victim gave a statement to the gardaí. There was no effort to collect evidence about the alleged crime. No request for medical records was made for ten months after the assault, and only then at the direction of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The assailant pleaded guilty to assault causing harm three years later and the issue of sexual assault was not adequately dealt with. The woman concerned was never examined in regard to sexual assault, which seems extraordinary because the notes on record at the time point to the fact she said she had been raped. The Garda Inspectorate report last year identified the fact that many rape or sexual assault cases were re-categorised as domestic violence or non-sexual assault cases, which is a worry.

The background to the case involved a Polish woman who had clear issues with articulating herself in the English language. It seems extraordinary that no interpreter was brought to bear on this case to facilitate the woman in communicating to the authorities the details of the appalling and dreadful attack. I recall, as Minister for Health, establishing ten years ago the first sexual assault unit in the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital in Cork, and many more followed. The whole idea was that protocols would be established so that proper, professional, comprehensive examination and assessment of women or men who had been sexually assaulted would take place. For that not to have happened in this case is extremely worrying. I have come across one or two other case where it has not happened.

If the Rape Crisis Centre in Galway had not become involved, an interpreter would never have been made available to the woman concerned. It was during the court proceedings three years later, when she sought help from it, that one was made available to her.

There must be procedures and protocols to be followed by health services and the gardaí in cases where assertions and allegations of sexual and physical assault have been made. What steps are taken to ensure those protocols and procedures are fulfilled by the gardaí and other authorities? I ask the Minister to outline the nature of the investigation the Garda has now, I understand, initiated into how the case was dealt with.

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