Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

By and large, this Bill is welcome and has been a long time coming. The Sex Offenders Act 2001 has not been updated since its introduction. This legislation has been promised since 2018 and it largely comes from committee recommendations, some dating back to 2006. A 15-year wait for recommendations to become legislation is, fortunately, not common but it is also unacceptable. Wider protections have long been needed for victims. While we are all aware that much more needs to be done regarding the prevention of sexual assault, many of the measures contained in this Bill will go a long way towards protecting victims.

A reduction in the notification period from seven days to three days, as others have mentioned, allowing for risk assessments of sex offenders by probation officers, gardaí and expert groups and providing a power for a court to prohibit a sex offender from working with children are all welcome measures. While this Bill deals with how we treat convicted sex offenders, we must first acknowledge the low rate of reporting and conviction of sex crimes. The 2020 annual report of the Sexual Violence Centre Cork, SVCC, found that only one-third of survivors had reported attacks to the Garda, while two-thirds of those contacting the centre for support had not. This indicates a lack of belief among victims of sexual violence in the Garda and, ultimately, in the legal system. So many are reaching out for other forms of support, but see the legal route as pointless or potentially harmful to them.

The latest information from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, indicates that only 10% of sex crimes reported to the Garda in 2020 have been detected, meaning that a suspected offender has been issued with a summons and faces prosecution. We must keep in mind that as little as one third of crimes, and most likely much less, were even reported in the first instance. Since 2019, the United States' National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, has alerted the Garda to 13,612 suspected cases of online child abuse. That was a 4.5% increase in tip-offs to the Garda in 2020 compared to 2019, but the force lacked the resources to process them in a timely way. In most cases, once the Garda gets tips, suspects must be arrested and their devices seized for forensic examination. In its report on An Garda Síochána for 2020, the Policing Authority noted that there was roughly a two-year backlog for examination of devices by the Garda. The result has been a delay of five years or more in the prosecution of some online child abusers. We must be doing everything we can to prosecute these cases and to give survivors an avenue to justice. I recognise the commitment and passion of the Minister in this area and I think she would also agree that we need to do more. This Bill is welcome, but we must be continually examining this situation. Legislation is only one part of this context and a variety of other things must be done. That is why regulatory impact assessments, RIAs, and similar mechanisms can be useful in the context of legislation.

At the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, earlier this month, Sergeant Michael Bracken "called for training immediately for all members of the new Divisional Protective Services Units, (DPSUs), which have been established to investigate sexual and domestic crimes". He stated that: "Their training hasn’t really rolled out yet despite what the Minister says". I ask the Minister to respond and to give some sort of timeframe in this regard. It is important to have these units in place, but they need proper training. The purpose of having these units was to have trained gardaí available to deal with victims appropriately and with care, and to repeat no longer the mistakes of the past where gardaí were not equipped to handle cases of sexual assault and victims often faced a retraumatisation when they reported crimes.

Moving on to some specific points of the Bill, I draw the Minister’s attention to the proposed new section 14B(7) to be inserted in a new Part of the principal Act, which concerns the risk assessment and management teams. It states that:

The risk assessment and management team may, for the purposes of the performance of its functions, consult with such persons as appear to it to be expert or knowledgeable in the assessment and management of the risk of harm posed by relevant offenders or by the relevant offender concerned.

Will this proposed new section apply to consultation with victims or victims' groups? The list of expert bodies which can be consulted by the new risk assessment and management teams is welcome, but it seems like there should be an avenue for victims to come forward with concerns or information about offenders. It is no secret that the justice system is, by and large, a cold house for victims of sex crimes. Many lose faith in the system throughout the legal process and often for good reasons. Therefore, we cannot just assume that the local gardaí or a probation officer will know every detail about the dangers that a victim can face from an offender. For instance, threats could have been made but not reported and that would be vital information in the context of a case and keeping a person safe.

The proposed new section 14E to be inserted in a new Part of the principal Act relates to the disclosure of identifying information about an offender and stipulates that there are conditions in which information will not be disclosed, namely, where there is deemed to be a significant risk in respect of the offender in question, including public disorder, physical harm to a person, damage to property, intimidation of, or threats to, a person. However, in an instance where a member of the public is at a greater risk than in the context of any of those matters listed, disclosure of the information is permitted.

I fully recognise that there are instances where the disclosure of identifying details is necessary in circumstances where threats have been made and when the individual is deemed to be at very high risk in a certain situation or where the individual is evading law enforcement, for example. It is hard to imagine, however, many cases where releasing the name, address and crimes of the sexual offender will not result in threats being made against him or her. A great deal of discretion is being given to the Garda in respect of quantifying the degree of risk faced by a possible victim and to weigh that against the risks that come with identifying a sex offender publicly.

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