Despite awareness-raising campaigns, sexual assault and rape is still a major threat to our society's safety, writes Ellen O'Malley Dunlop
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's (DRCC) volunteer services accompanied 30 people to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit at the Rotunda Hospital in December.
The figures are the same as 2006 - despite concerted awareness-raising campaigns by the centre highlighting the inherent dangers, particularly when people are partying.
Do these numbers reflect the extent of the crimes of rape and sexual assault in our society?
The honest answer to this question is that we don't know. But what we do know is that 30 people reported these crimes to the Garda at a time when we are supposed to be celebrating goodwill towards all men. We know that as well as enduring a heinous crime committed against them, some of these people also suffered extreme physical violence and had to be treated medically.
We know from those working at the coalface of these crimes that there are situations whereby two people will plan this type of attack and stand by while another human being is degraded in this manner.
We also know from the SAVI Report: Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland, which is the most extensive piece of research conducted in Ireland on experiences, beliefs and attitudes concerning sexual violence, that only one in 10 reported this crime.
Are the 30 people who reported these crimes this Christmas holiday part of the nine in 10 who did not report in the past or are we seeing an escalation in the problem? Of course we hope the answer is the former.
What we do know from our experience of working in the field and from international best practice is that these problems will not be solved easily or swiftly because they are complex, insidious and hidden for the most part.
But they must be solved. The three-pronged approach of provision of services, protection for the victim and prevention is a model based on proven international best practice.
This approach requires commitment and co-operation from Government, from NGOs, from communities and from individuals working together. Of course, this way of tackling the problem will take time, resources and will need to be provided on an ongoing basis in order to give real long-term lasting results.
The first imperative is a commitment to provide the services to respond to the problem. The 16 Rape Crisis Centres across the State have been operating on a wing and a prayer for years. And their funding has been capped for the past four years. The good news is that recently the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, committed to ring-fencing funding for these services.
Hopefully, the centres can now get on with restoring the services that were lost because of the funding deficits and to developing the necessary new services.
Rape Crisis Centres provide the professional responses needed to combat rape and sexual assault in our society and help the victims come through the trauma and enable them to get on with living their lives fully again.
Funding has also been made available for upgrading the four Sexual Assault Treatment Units in the State and to providing two new units, one in Galway and one in Mullingar. Plans are in place to provide forensic examination training for nurses as well as for doctors.
Hopefully, when the newly trained specialists become available we will not be hearing any more horror stories of people having to travel round trips of 10 hours to receive the necessary forensic examination - as was the case recently when a person had to travel from Donegal to Dublin and back again because of lack of trained personnel.
To protect the victim and society from the perpetrators of these crimes we must also have well-informed laws, we must have confidence in our legal and judicial systems and in the Garda Síochána.
To achieve this, it is necessary to change the current system. It is not possible here to cover all the changes necessary - such as sentencing guidelines for judges, specialist liaison gardaí, one Sexual Offences Act, to name but a few. However, it is crucial to continue lobbying for changes to ensure the perpetrators are punished appropriately and the victims get justice.
Last year the All Party Committee on Child Protection made 62 recommendations that would go a long way to making the changes needed. However, they must be implemented now, instead of waiting for a crisis which would precipitate action.
The third response to dealing with rape and sexual assault is prevention. This begins with the child. Rapists are not born. People become rapists. We need to start a comprehensive education process in our primary schools and continue it through secondary and on to third level.
Funding should be made available for research and awareness-raising campaigns.
Last year the Government launched a new office which would incorporate an all-Government response to dealing with the area of violence against women in our society. This office is called Cosc and is the Irish office for the prevention of domestic, sexual and gender based violence. This is a positive indicator of a genuine commitment at Government level to deal with these heinous crimes.
We also need to be vigilant in our communities, to look out for one another and to take care. Let us hope that with the commitment to the provision of the services, to the protection of the victim and to the resources being made available for the preventative measures to be put in place, that our society will in time become a safer place to live in. Hopefully, rape and sexual assault will become exceptional crimes which will not be tolerated and will be reported and the perpetrator will be severely punished.
Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop is chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.