Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has established a national unit to investigate allegations of sexual assault and rape by “predators” within the Defence Forces.
The operation was set up in advance of the publication of last week’s report by the Independent Review Group (IRG) which detailed widespread abuse within the military, including attempts to cover up complaints and persecute victims.
Mr Harris revealed the existence of the operation on Tuesday at the annual conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI). He said its job was to detect “predators” within the Defence Forces. The Garda already had 26 “historical” complaints from Defence Forces members. This number is expected to rise following the publication of the hard-hitting IRG report, he said.
The unit, which is part of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, is also reviewing historical complaints to ensure all previous allegations of sexual abuse within the Defence Forces have been properly investigated.
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The unit was set up during the IRG’s year-long review process and in consultation with military authorities. Mr Harris said complaints by retired and serving Defence Forces members were being investigated. “We were in discussions with military authorities prior to the IRG report, and this seemed to us a prudent action to take in terms of being ready to receive complaint of serious sexual assault,” the commissioner said.
The move has been welcomed by the Defence Forces, which said it fully supported the initiative. “The Defence Forces Military Police Corps stand ready to assist An Garda Síochána if required at any stage,” a spokeswoman said.
Asked if the Military Police will have any role in the investigations, Mr Harris said: “We view ourselves as being competent in investigating complaints of serious sexual assault.”
Individual complaints will be investigated by protective services units at divisional level but they will feed information back to the national unit which will collate the data. This will determine potential patterns and links between cases. Mr Harris said. “There may be predators out there and we want to make sure that if individuals are accused of multiple offences, that we gather all the evidence and report that to the DPP.”
Some of the reports received by gardaí date back to the 1960s, Mr Harris said, and some have already been investigated.
Specialist gardaí “stand ready” to take complaints in the wake of the IRG report, which, among other findings, stated women were “barely tolerated” within the Defence Forces.
“We would encourage individuals who do wish to make a complaint to come forward to any Garda division and their complaint will be dealt with in confidence and reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions,” the commissioner said.
One of the recommendations of the IRG report was the Garda should take over investigations of criminal complaints from the Defence Forces Military Police, particularly regarding those of sexual abuse.
The IRG concluded the Defence Forces was “not a safe working environment” for either men or women.
Retired army captain Diane Byrne, a member of the Women of Honour group, said the organisation was not informed in advance of the Garda Commissioner’s plans for a unit to investigate cases of sexual assault in the Defence Forces.
Ms Byrne told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland the first the group heard of the unit was through the media.
When asked about her experience of Garda involvement in complaints within the Defence Forces, she said it was anecdotal but that any action should be part of a statutory inquiry.
Questions remained about what had happened to historic complaints, Ms Byrne said.
“So we really need to understand what’s going on. This all seems very, very fast and very new. Of course, we welcome it. For what it seems to be. But we have no understanding of what that is. And it’s very, very hard for us to tell anybody that’s coming to us, who has very little trust in everything that’s been going on to date, to go into this because we don’t know anything about it. We haven’t been told.”
The Tánaiste’s proposal to set up an independent oversight group to ensure the culture within the Defence Forces changes was “more of the same” from the perspective of the Women of Honour group, Ms Byrne said.
“Again, no communication, no collaboration. We knew nothing about this. Like this is all before a statutory inquiry is settled.”
“It’s very, very hard to have trust in this. There’s one chance to fix this issue going forward. And what we need is something very different to what’s ever been done before to get some sort of real restorative change in this country,” she said.
“The one thing that we’ve never had with our troubled history is a chance to heal and move forward. And unless we can do this in an open and honest and transparent way, where anybody who had any involvement has to account for their actions, we’re not moving forward from this time.”
