Vicims’ groups under pressure Sunday, July 05, 2009Help groups have been inundated with calls since the publication of the Ryan Report, but cannot rely on sustained funding from the government, writes Public Affairs Correspondent John Burke.
Over the past six weeks,
476 people have contacted sexual abuse advocacy group One In Four for the first time.This figure represented more new victims coming forward than the agency would normally encounter in an average year.Last Monday alone, 70 people called for the first time.’
‘The phones did not stop all day,” said Maeve Lewis, director of One In Four.
Since the Ryan Report which investigated physical, sexual and emotional abuse at industrial schools in Ireland was published last month, One In Four and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) have been flooded with requests for first-time assistance by abuse survivors.
Around 200 of those who contacted One In Four in the past month required referral to the agency’s in-house clinical psychotherapy service.
The agency would usually deal with such numbers in a full year.“Our staff have responded magnificently,” Lewis said.
“They are coping with a level of demand way over the resources at hand. It is impossible for people to continue to work at this level of intensity without falling short of meeting the needs of people who are accessing our services.”
Lewis wrote to Barry Andrews, the Minister for Children, in recent days, saying that her agency was in dire straits and desperately required funding.
She said that the avalanche of new people coming forward for advice and help was directly related to the release of the Ryan Report, which found ‘‘endemic’’ levels of rape and sexual assault in places of detention, orphanages and schools run by the Catholic Church.
It also found that state inspectors had failed to intervene, even though some religious-run schools operating between the 1930s and 1990s had ‘‘operated a high level of ritualised beating’’. Three weeks after the release of the report, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, ‘‘on behalf of the state and of all citizens of the state’’, issued a ‘‘long overdue’’ apology to victims of childhood abuse.
Cowen said that the implementation of Ryan’s recommendations was a government priority. In the same Dail debate, Andrews said that proposals for full implementation of the recommendations would be introduced this month.
Meanwhile, another surge of people coming forward to support groups could follow the publication of the report from the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation.
The commission, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, spanned a selection of abuse cases which occurred in the archdiocese of Dublin between 1975 and 2004.
It is expected to present its report to Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Justice, in
the next ten days. The report is almost completed, but Murphy is considering whether or not known offenders awaiting criminal court proceedings should be named.
Last week, Lewis and Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop, chief executive of the DRCC, co-signed a letter to Ahern, in which they asked him to consider delaying the release of the Dublin report until the autumn ‘‘at the earliest’’.
This is because both agencies are stretched to breaking point, and would not be able to bear the brunt of another surge of new cases, which are expected to arise after the Dublin report.
However, Murphy’s report is expected to be half the size of the Ryan Report. It is understood that the commission was disappointed that
fewer than the expected number of victims came forward, especially as the profile of victims was younger.Most of the abusers are still relatively young men, some of whom are serving prison sentences for sexual abuse, although many are living in retirement and have been laicised by the Church.
The commission has concentrated on how the allegations were handled by the Church, arising from a representative sample of 46 clerical abusers.The commission is believed to have taken evidence from people who have information relating to abuse prior to January 1, 1975, although it is believed that this information would not form any part of its findings.
.....‘‘Avery significant number of the people who have come forward to us as first-time survivors looking for advocacy and psychotherapy in the past six weeks have actually been men who are former pupils at Christian Brother-run day schools, for whom there has not been a redress scheme or a commission to inquire into their particular situation,” Lewis said.
While the agency originally focused on clerical abuse survivors, it has evolved to reflect the predominant role of non-clerical abusers as perpetrators.
....
In 2007,the organisation received €621,000 from the HSE and had a total income of over €1.3 million with the remainder coming from fundraising, donations and smaller grants. This year, private fundraising will fall short of previous years, due to straitened economic circumstances in line with the decline generally in private donations to NGOs and charities, according to Lewis.
In previous years, funding had generally risen in line with increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).T he fall in CPI will go some way to softening the blow to groups such as One In Four, but only to a limited degree.
‘‘We need €130,000 extra to fund for the provision of one extra psychotherapist to deal with the near-doubling of the work load,” Lewis said.
However, not all the 70 people who rang the One In Four last Monday will become new clients.’ ‘Some just wish to speak to someone maybe only briefly before building up the courage to go a step further and make further contact,” Lewis said.‘‘It’s the first step on the road to dealing with what happened to them.”
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