It was a groundbreaking report funded by Atlantic Philanthropies which documented the vast scale of sexual violence experienced by over 3,000 adults in relation to age and gender in Ireland. It was the first report of its kind and was commissioned by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and was described as ‘groundbreaking’ at the time. It was particularly important as it focused both on the responses of those abused, but also on the attitudes and perceptions of the general public to sexual violence, something which has been rarely documented before.

Impact
That however, was 15 years ago when we knew less about sexual violence, domestic violence and how many people it really affects across the country. 15 years on and with the data now obsolete the Irish government is refusing to invest the €1 million required to carry out a second SAVI report. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he would rather invest in frontline services than research.To me that is putting the cart before the horse. How can you adequately fund services if you don't know which services people need? The government wouldn't use 15 year old housing data to design their new housing policy so why do the same for these services? As Mary-Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin pointed out, if our Taoiseach was willing to put €5 million into his Strategic Communications Unit, he should be willing to put 20% of that into a second SAVI report.

Knowledge as they say is power and knowledge and understanding is what the first SAVI report provided. The first SAVI report in 2002 showed that 1 in 5 women experienced contact sexual abuse in childhood while 1 in 6 men experienced the same. It also showed that 1 in 5 women experienced contact sexual assault in adulthood with 1 in 10 men experiencing the same.

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