The courts are perceived generally to be unfriendly to victims of crime, the chairwoman of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Breda Allen, said yesterday. She said the centre would renew its call for victims to be legally represented at rape and sexual assault trials.
The centre first sought such representation in 1983 and will be launching a major campaign on the issue this year.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern yesterday visited the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre headquarters on Leeson Street for a brief ceremony to mark its 25th anniversary. Commending its work, he said it was needed "now more than ever".
He said he knew the centre didn't always have it easy "and that some arms of the State, such as the Revenue Commissioners, tried to get in through the windows and doors".
This was a reference to the late 1980s, before the centre was granted charitable status, when the Revenue Commissioners almost closed it down seeking taxes due. The government intervened and paid the shortfall.
Mr Ahern said the centre's 33 full-time staff and its 18-plus volunteers were to be applauded for being available 365 days a year, even on Christmas day.
He wanted to acknowledge the huge impact in this day and age of such voluntary activity.
Speaking later, board member of the centre, Audrey Conlon, reflected on how attitudes had changed since 1979 when it was so difficult to convince people of the seriousness of the issues they were dealing with.
She recalled the shock when then senator Gemma Hussey introduced a private member's Bill in the Seanad and used words such as "rape, sexual assault, and penetration" in a speech, "things which were not talked about then".
Both she and Annie Gallagher, the centre's funding co-ordinator, attributed much of their success in latter years to former director Olive Braiden.
They recalled the outspoken support of the late Dick Walsh, a former political editor of The Irish Times, in helping the centre avoid closure in the late 1980s.
They also spoke of the intervention then of Charles Haughey to provide a one-off payment (the first State assistance they received) that helped the centre to avoid closure.
