Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 18, between lines 19 and 20, to insert the following: “(10A) Where the person has previously been convicted of a sexual crime against the person or a person connected with the other person and the person is on the sex offenders register for the previous crime, the term of the sentence should run concurrent to the period of time that the person remains on the sex offenders register.”.

The "person connected with the other person" could be a relative of the person who has been the victim of a sexual crime. Under this amendment, the term of the harassment order would run concurrently to the remainder of the perpetrator's term on the sex offenders register for the previous crime.

My concern is that the majority of these cases will come as orders and be heard in cameraby the courts. In practice, the victim will be presented with the position that either the perpetrator of the harassment agrees to an order for 18 months or two years or the victim has to go through the trauma of giving evidence. In the latter instance, the order may be applied for a longer period, but the perpetrator will probably appeal it to the higher courts and the victim will have to go through the process again. The last thing that any victim wants is to be retraumatised time and again, so the victim will accept what is put in front of him or her, the perpetrator will agree to an 18-month or two-year order, and we will be back to square one. The perpetrator will ignore the order and the victim of the sexual offence – the person who has been traumatised by the harassment and has had to come before the courts, prepared to give evidence – will have to do it all over again. The victim will have to try to collate the evidence and gather up the witnesses, and will be retraumatised while the harassment is still ongoing.

If someone has an order in place relating to the sex offenders register and has to comply with various provisions for five or ten years or permanently, and if he or she comes before the courts for harassment of the victim after a post-release order has been put in place, the harassment order should run concurrently with that. I do not want to see the following situation happening: a sex offender who is released from prison with a ten-year post-release order in place deciding to harass the victim of the original crime, retraumatising that individual, and the victim having to find enough energy and courage to gather together all of the evidence to seek a harassment order. The very least the courts should do is ensure that the harassment order runs concurrently with the sex offender's post-release order instead of the victim having to negotiate in the courts' corridors how long the order will be in place only for the perpetrator to ignore that order, requiring the victim to go through the whole treadmill again. This is wrong. It should not be left to the victim to drive the process forward. It should be the State's responsibility to protect that individual, who has come forward, given evidence and ensured that a conviction was secured. If the perpetrator, after leaving prison, decides for any reason to harass the victim, the harassment order should automatically be applied to the full period of his or her post-release order. The victim should not be in and out of court trying to have the order enforced. These people have already been abused. That it happened in the first place shows that, for some reason, we and the system let them down. We should not introduce legislation that could facilitate the further traumatisation and abuse of these victims. I ask the Minister to consider the amendment.

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