Ignored, stonewalled and delayed, departing child protection lead issues damning report – The Irish Times
Government departments are “not willing” to discuss significant issues on child welfare with the special rapporteur on child protection, are ignoring his correspondence and are delaying the publication of his reports, with “negative” consequences, he has claimed.
Dr Conor O’Mahony, who announced earlier this year he would not seek a second term as special rapporteur, says the value of the role, “will be significantly limited if Government departments, other than Department of Children, are not willing to discuss the significant issues of the day”.
In his final report to Government, which he submitted in June and which was published on Thursday, he says: “A recurring issue throughout my term was the length of time that elapses between the submission of reports to Government and their publication, which ranged between four months … and seven months”.
Such delays are “difficult to understand” as most of his reports are published without Government response. The delays have “negative consequences” including anxiety for individuals affected by issues in the reports. Some analyses in the reports are “outdated by the time of publication” and “uncomfortable” confusion can occur as to who is special rapporteur if a predecessor’s report is published as a new appointee is trying to establish themselves.
Correspondence to the Department of Education “on several occasions” about the revised terms of an ex gratia scheme for survivors of sex abuse in schools, “received no reply” he says, while Government concerns about his recommendations on donor-assisted human reproduction and surrogacy “were not shared directly” with him. Several of the concerns were “based on a misunderstanding” he believes and could have been avoided had there been direct engagement, he says.
“Child protection is a whole-of-Government issue and demands a whole-of-Government response,” says Dr O’Mahony. “A Government-appointed special rapporteur on child protection requires the opportunity to engage constructively with all Government departments (and not just with the Department of Children) as appropriate.”
In the wide-ranging report, Dr O’Mahony is highly critical of Government in numerous areas. The redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes, county homes and foster homes, published in November 2021, “creates an obvious discrimination between women and children who experienced similar harms”, he says.
It “makes no provision whatsoever for redress for serious ill-treatment and forced-labour experienced by children in foster homes”. Failure by the State to “address this omission” would violate its European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) obligations to survivors.
The revised ex gratia scheme for survivors of sex abuse in schools introduced after the Louise O’Keeffe case, he continues, has “significant flaws” including that applicants must have initiated legal proceedings against the State before July 1st, 2021.
“It is an entirely arbitrary date, with no basis in either the O’Keeffe judgment or the statute of limitations, and seems designed only to exclude deserving applicants from the scheme,” he says.
A three-year backlog in Garda forensic examinations of computers and devices used to view child sex-abuse material (CSAM), is “alarming” and risks puts children at risk of “preventable abuse” by leaving perpetrators “at large for extended periods” even after they have come to the attention Gardai.
Resources to this area must be increased and recruitment undertaken “as a matter of the highest priority”. It is both a “moral imperative to prevent abuse” and a “legal imperative”, says Dr O’Mahony. If a child was abused by a perpetrator at large because of a delay in examining a device, he warns, they would “almost certainly succeed” in a case against the State under Article 3 of the ECHR..
Child homelessness continues to worsen. “If the current rate of increase continues, the historic high of over 3,800 children accessing emergency accommodation in 2019 will be exceeded in early 2023. The Government has failed for too long to come to grips with Ireland’s housing crisis,” he says.
The risk of child trafficking into Ireland “has been significantly increased by the influx of refugees from Ukraine”, as have pressures on housing, and on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). “The response to Ukrainian refugees also sheds light on inadequacies in provision made for refugees from other locations, and highlights the need for a non-discriminatory approach,” he says.
Dr O’Mahony flags concerns about “inadequate” resources for CAMHS, increased privatisation of residential care, and increasing use of the concept of parental alienation in custody disputes where mothers raise concerns about domestic and sexual abuse.
He quotes 2021 UK research by Women’s Aid Federation England and Queen Mary University of London which finds “children’s voices can be silenced in these cases” as it is assumed that the ‘alienating’ parent has prevented the child from telling the truth”.
“It is concluded that theories of parental alienation ‘should not be considered without analysis of the impact they have on survivors of domestic abuse and their children’,” he notes.