While a new pilot centre allowing for all the complex components of early-stage child sex abuse criminal investigations to be carried out under one roof is to be welcomed, it is incredible it has taken so long.
Best practice internationally has seen these centres established decades ago in some countries.
The Garda Inspectorate has repeatedly highlighted the shortcomings in Ireland’s approach. But until relatively recently, with the roll-out of new Garda protective services units to assist adult victims, little had changed.
This is despite sexually abused children being the most vulnerable of all who fall victim to crime.
They need a nuanced and sympathetic response from the Garda and other agencies to limit the trauma they have already endured.
There are also practical considerations. If victims are not medically examined expertly, for example, and witness statements are not taken from them in a way that stands up to all the rigours of the justice system, perpetrators will escape prosecution.
If a victim does not, for example, properly account for their reasons for being at a particular location or account for marks on their body, this can be used to create reasonable doubt or witness unreliability later.
Complexities
An expert interviewer will be trained in these complexities and will steer victims through them. Similarly, if questions from an interviewer are too leading, or indeed not probing enough, the victim’s statement can become degraded as a piece of evidence.
The initial interview and victim statement that derives from it can be so important for a later prosecution that in the Netherlands, for example, only specially trained interviewers are allowed to carry out this work.
Generalist police officers who first come into contact with a child sex abuse victim are permitted to ask basic questions about the victim’s and perpetrator’s identity and when and where the alleged sexual assault took place.
And they can only ask these questions to aid them in deciding what expert interviewer should be called in to take the first statement of complaint.
Even family members of child victims can be counselled and offered advice at the new One House centres
The new "One House" model seeks to bring Ireland up to speed. In the new centres gardaí and Tusla child protection social workers will be able to interview victims in comfortable purpose-built surroundings.
In the same buildings other staff will be on hand to carry out medical and forensic examinations. These very often yield the DNA evidence that secures a prosecution.
And even family members of child victims can be counselled and offered advice at the new One House centres. The first such centre will open, on a pilot basis, early next year in Galway.
At present, interviewing victims as well as medically and forensically examining them and offering other assistance can take place across several locations. In many parts of the country this can be spread over a wide area.
Professionalism
One House is intended to provide not only these services under one roof, but to ensure they are delivered by experts trained for the task; a level of professionalism often missing heretofore.
The Garda Inspectorate, for example, has consistently highlighted how the first Garda member to speak to child sex abuse victims becomes the main investigator in their case. This happens simply because that Garda member was manning a Garda station public desk when the victim arrived to report abuse.
In many Garda stations the only place available to interview child victims has been the interview rooms where suspects for crimes were interviewed.
The inspectorate has further highlighted how few Garda members are trained to interview victims of child sex abuse. And even detectives, expert investigators of crime, were seldom trained to deal with child sex abuse victims.
The new centres, if they work, should reduce poor practice and help replace it with a professional approach.
