People who were sexually assaulted as a child take an average of 30 years to seek professional help and contact a rape crisis centre.
A new study by the Rape Crisis Network found that children take more than a decade to tell a parent or family member about sexual violence.
Just 30 per cent will report the abuse to a formal authority, such as An Garda Síochána.
The analysis is based on the experiences of 1,300 people who attended clinics in 2019, along with more than 10,000 calls to its helpline.
CEO of the Rape Crisis Network, Dr Cliona Saidléar, said people are not seeking help for many years in the majority of cases.
That’s critical stages of life that have been impacted without support
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“Someone who has been sexually assaulted under 13 takes on average 30 years to come to a rape crisis centre, so that’s critical stages of life that have been impacted without support,” she said.
“For adults, we know that it takes on average three years, except in the circumstance of 25 per cent of the adult survivors, where they have been abused by a partner or an ex-partner, so this is a domestic violence situation - it also takes them seven years to come forward.”
Dr Saidléar said the findings show that critical stages of a person's life are impacted without support.
“If someone under 13, if we don’t intervene at that moment in time or very early on the child’s life, that child’s childhood passes, and their life stages, critical life stages passes,” she said.
“When you’re talking 30 years, you’re talking about someone who is now in their mid-30s, maybe in their 40s, and that’s on average, before they’re coming forward and beginning to address [these issues].”
Anyone affected by these issues can find their local rape crisis centre on the Rape Crisis Network's help website or call the 24-hour helpline run by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 778888.
