Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Tá cúig nóiméad agam, ceapaim.

In her song, "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)", Annie Lennox of the Eurhythmics belted out these lyrics:

And so I face the wall

Turn my back against it all

How I wish I'd been unborn

Wish I was unliving here

There are many victims of sexual violence who can identify with these words. The consequences and repercussions of a sexual offence on a victim are multifaceted. The scale of the damage inflicted varies from one victim to the next depending on the level of depravity. We know the physical wounds will heal eventually, albeit leaving nasty permanent scars, but psychological wounds remain open, sore and exposed. More often than not the right balm to soothe the psychic wound cannot be found and it continues to ooze throughout a person's life, manifesting in multifaceted anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders. The overriding sense of shame and even guilt is a common trait among victims of sexual violence. Some of the more long-term devastating effects of such violence, because all forms of sexual violence are violence, is the pervasive sense of fear and vulnerability, deep emotional pain, difficulty forming and maintaining relationships and the development of psychological illnesses, including addiction.

I very much welcome this Bill. I will talk about the matter of consent which I know the Tánaiste is open to discussing and re-examining. As legislators, it is wholly incumbent upon us to do all in our power to ensure we enact laws to protect victims and prosecute offenders. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre told me that in 2015, 11,789 women, children and men sought its counselling services. One in three women and one in five men have been the victims of sexual crime. One in eight women and one in 20 men have been the victims of rape or attempted rape. These are shocking statistics. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2015 is a vitally important step towards protecting our most vulnerable from sexual crime.

We are living in a digital world where technology is expanding at a ferocious rate. The development of social media is a communications technology breakthrough which has revolutionised how we communicate with each other, especially young people, but these online forms have a darker side. They can be used as a conduit through which predatory and devious men and women target and attract children. Parental responsibility is crucial in ensuring children are safeguarded from straying onto online forums where their safety is jeopardised. The policing of children 24-7, however, as I know as a parent, is unachievable and unrealistic in many households.

We, as a country, are all too familiar with the reprehensible ravages of child abuses. The One in Four campaign, for example, tragically highlights that child sex abuse is all too prevalent in Irish society. That any child has to undergo the trauma of sexual assault is heartbreaking, so a figure like one in four is simply not good enough.

It is heartening that this Bill provides significantly greater protections for those vulnerable children. I welcome that it brings us in line with our international obligations, as has been said by previous speakers, laid out by EU directives and that it will also facilitate our ratification of the very important Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse.

Previous legislation could never have envisaged these new communication platforms and how they would be exploited. I welcome section 8 on grooming and section 15 which redefines a person of authority. It is a vital inclusion. The nature of authority, the power imbalance and the abuse of authority is clearly delineated in this Bill with its reference to current and former positions of responsibility. The Bill's inclusion of a proximity test regarding the age of consent ensures the focus of our criminal law legislation remains the protection of children and sexual assault rather than interfering in consensual sexual activity between young people.

The mammoth work of the Rape Crisis Centre, for example, with its Ask Consent campaign, is to be commended. The very simple message is that sex without consent is rape. In addition, the introduction of sexual consent workshops in universities is vital to educate young people on the issues surrounding the grey area of consent. Universities are rife with sexual dalliances, flings and one night stands, none of which is any of my business so long as they are consensual. I am interested in the non-consensual. Peer pressure, FOMO, which means fear of missing out, and alcohol can be a toxic potent mix, and I know many women and men who have free-fallen into a hotbed of desire where consent has been left standing at the corner of the room, a silent witness, watching events like a voyeuristic room-mate.

Four years after Annie Lennox's "Sexcrime" song, Jodie Foster starred in the blockbuster movie, "The Accused", which highlighted the issue of rape and consent and brought it back into the zeitgeist. One of our own Irish best-selling authors, Louise O'Neill, has achieved that recently with her best-selling book, Asking For It, and the resulting television documentary thereby ensuring the word "consent" remains in our vernacular and nomenclature and helps us all to focus our minds on what defines consent. I firmly believe it is in the interest of victims to have a statutory definition of what constitutes consent in our legislation. I call on the Tánaiste and the Government to include a definition of consent in the Bill. Section 9 of the Criminal Law (Rape)(Amendment) Act 1990 states that the failure to offer resistance does not amount to consent, but it does not go far enough. In England and Wales, section 74 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 defines consent in the following way: "a person consents if he agrees by choice, and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice".

Freedom of choice is of interest here. What defines freedom? Is it finally relenting or giving in to a sexual act? Is it easier than pushing the person away? Is that consent? Is it consent if a person is too weary to say no again after the hundredth time? What if they are afraid if they say no the person will find someone else or do something worse and so they give in? We need a definition of freedom if we are going to use a reference from that particular Act. What defines freedom? What defines capacity? Was the person drunk? Did they have three drinks or ten drinks? How drunk were they? Were they wearing a provocative short skirt, dancing on the dance floor all night, leading someone on and being consistently flirtatious? Were they dealing with some serious personal issues at the time and their judgment was clouded? Could they be blamed for trying? This is no longer a grey area; it is now white haired.

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