Garda is failing child victims of sexual abuse, report says

There are too few gardaí deployed in trying to catch sexual abusers of children and online groomers and the Garda has been slow to make necessary changes in its approach to child abuse crimes, the Garda Inspectorate has said.

In a new report examining how the Garda addresses sexual offences against children, the Garda Inspectorate said many of the recommendations it made for the Garda in its first review of how the force investigates such offences in 2012 were yet to be implemented.

It also notes that there had been an explosion in internet-based offending and in dangers to children from offenders on social media since 2012.

The Garda Inspectorate said the Garda was failing to keep up with those changes, something which was putting children’s safety at risk.

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It found that no specialist child centres were in place to deal properly with child victims, although 66 per cent of all sex crimes reported to the Garda involved child victims. Meanwhile, gardaí who were not experienced and had no training in the investigation of sex offences were still investigating sensitive sexual crimes involving children.

The inspectorate also said some images of child sexual abuse submitted to the Garda had not been investigated.

There were still long delays with recording sex crimes against children on the Garda’s Pulse database. One-third took a week to input and others took a year.

The Garda Inspectorate, an oversight body which reviews Garda performance and recommends improvements, said there were also still delays in the forensic examination of computers in child sexual abuse cases, despite the deployment of extra resources into this area.

Garda Inspectorate chief inspector Mark Toland said that technology that would allow the Garda to identify who is accessing extreme child abuse material in Ireland was available to the Garda but was not being used.

Asked at the launch of the report why this was the case, he said the Garda first needed to commit the resources that would be required when that technology was “turned on” for use.

If that technology was used, Mr Toland said gardaí could call to the addresses of those accessing extreme material online and carry out searches to gather evidence.

They could also determine if those people had access to children in their personal or professional lives and to take action against them if that was the case.

‘Inefficient relationships’

The relationships between the Garda and Tusla were “inefficient”, the inspectorate also found. Often, important meetings to discuss cases were not held.

Offenders who should be under a monitoring regime were not being monitored, although the level of sex crimes was increasing.

Some 28 per cent of children had reported being contacted by strangers online and “sexting” involving child victims was a growing problem, the inspectorate said.

Of the 28 Garda divisions, 12 divisions did not update the inspectorate on how child sexual abuse cases it was reviewing were progressing.

The inspectorate also found “significant delays” across the Garda when seeking to review the progress of the 2,000 cases it studied as part of its review. Very often investigations were allowed to “drift” and the quality of the investigations into sex crimes often significantly varied.

Mr Toland said the Garda needed to change and improve much more quickly than it has in recent years. Gardaí not long out of the Garda College in Templemore had been "asked to investigate the rape of a child", he said.

Mr Toland added that this did not happen in other countries studied.

“The inspectorate believes the pace of implementation [of reforms on sexual offences against children] needs to increase as less than half of the [2012] recommendations are considered implemented,” he said.

The Garda Inspectorate had come across victims as young as three-years-old.

Only 5 per cent of child victims had been abused by total strangers.

Mr Toland said the increased dangers to children needed to be urgently addressed. He called for special Garda centres for dealing with child victims, including interviewing child victims, to be in place by the end of the year.

This would require Tusla to put forward social workers to carry out this work and for the Garda to train them.

The inspectorate believes the lack of progress, especially in the online sphere, is becoming critical.

“Since our 2012 report there has been a considerable increase in the risks posed to children by the internet and social media,” the new report, titled Responding to Child Sex Abuse, said.

“The volume of online child abuse material is growing exponentially,” it said, adding that it found an “insufficient online Garda presence” while conducting its review.

“Other jurisdictions have a stronger online presence to target those grooming children and accessing child abuse material.”

‘Lack of progress’

The Garda Inspectorate concluded that of 29 recommendations it made in its first report on the subject six years ago, 13 had been implemented by the Garda. Another six were not implemented and six more were partially put in place.

The inspectorate said that while it was concerned by the lack of progress in this regard, the Garda had performed well in other areas.

For example, it praised the establishment of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau units.

“These have the potential to address many of the outstanding recommendations from the 2012 report, as well as areas of concern found during the review,” the inspectorate said in its statement to mark the launch of the new report.

The inspectorate also said that when it consulted with groups that helped victims, they reported that the relationship between the Garda and victims had improved in recent years.

Mr Toland was asked at the launch about so-called paedophile-hunter vigilante groups, and he said the Garda Inspectorate did not support their actions. He said investigations should be conducted by the Garda.