Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. I will not use all the time available to me because, as a victim of sexual assault, I always struggle to speak about this topic.

It struck me that the report found that less than 10% of victims report incidents of sexual assault or rape. As the mother of two daughters, I would like to be able to encourage my daughters, if something was to ever happen to them, to hold the person responsible accountable. To be honest, I do not think I would do so. When I see how people are treated and how victims, primarily women, have their lives scrutinised as if they are on trial. If you report a crime, the person at fault does not have to defend himself. The woman has to defend herself, her history, who she is, her past sexual relationships and what she was wearing and doing. She is scrutinised. I do not know how anyone could stand over watching a loved one being scrutinised in that way when trying to hold somebody accountable for something that the person in question, not the loved one, did. We have so many campaigns saying who is at fault for rape and sexual violence but the State institutions, through they way in which they have operated for a long time, reinforce a view that is the opposite of the message of such campaigns because victims continue to be scrutinised in this way when they try to prosecute.

The committee has done good work but we have a long way to go. When we were drafting the report the story of Zoe, which is not her real name, hit the newspapers. Zoe was the youngest person ever to give an account of personal sexual assault. She was only a child. That case exposed huge wrongs in our system in relation to how we treat vulnerable witnesses, especially children who are the most vulnerable of all. My office drafted a report and, I hope, the Joint Committee on Justice will do a new piece of work in the new year on underage witnesses. That would add to the report before us.

Some parts of the report stand out. It contains many recommendations on infrastructure, including the need for information technology, IT, for video testimonies and the appointment of more judges. Infrastructure aside, there are aspects of the report that can move much more quickly, for instance, the impact assessments that should be made to prioritise a victim-centred approach to stop retraumatisation. We must ensure the availability of specialist training for questioning of vulnerable people. This needs to be rolled out as soon as possible for members of the legal profession. The report suggests that this should be voluntary but to be effective, it must be mandatory, possibly at King's Inns.

We must also ensure the refurbishment of court premises to allow for everything that I said in relation to structural issues. We must ensure separate legal representation to support victims of sexual assault is provided throughout the entire trial process, as appropriate but particularly when questioned about their sexual history during cross-examination. It is important that comparable resources are made available on a par with the legal representation afforded to the prosecution and defence to ensure the balance between a victim's rights and the fair procedures to which a defendant is entitled. We must ensure the roll-out of a scheme for the training and accreditation of intermediaries progresses as quickly as possible and is monitored with a view to its implementation on a nationwide basis.

The joint committee also recommended that consent be incorporated within the new RSE curriculum at both primary and secondary level and that programmes of consent are rolled out at third level as a matter or urgency. This is extremely important. While we can have discussions about how wrong sexual assault and rape are and who is at fault, we must also accept what we need to do at the earliest possible stage in terms of how we treat our young people and address their understanding of consent and what they think it is or is not. We are also failing young men because they are now the product of the previous generation and the generations before that. If we want to get to a stage where we no one experiences sexual assault, we must equip our young people to ensure they do not commit sexually assault. We need to accept that and it needs to begin at school age.The report goes on to recommend that we, "Assess the potential to compile these statistics by use of a singular body or database or through developing a system which would apply an individual identifying number to each case, to better track such cases as they progress through different State institutions including data from the Family Law Courts, if appropriate."

I thank the committee for its report. I thank Senators for listening to the contents of the report. I hope we can move forward and look at those underage victims. I hope we can look at the Barnahus model that was being implemented in Galway. We need to consider how we can implement that on a much wider basis for vulnerable children who are also witnesses in their own sexual assault cases.