The chief executive of advocacy and support group One in Four, Deirdre Kenny, has said there is a pressing need for widespread changes and comprehensive support in how childhood sexual abuse is perceived, discussed, and addressed.
The organisation saw a 40 per cent increase in demand for its services in the last year, she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Since September, more than 500 people have approached One in Four seeking support in the wake of the publication of the scoping inquiry into historical sexual abuse in schools.
“I think it was heartwarming that so many people were able to come forward in September this year and since. And but it's also alarming that that number of people have and I'm sure many more have been impacted by sexual abuse in Ireland," she said.
"And it certainly put a lot of pressure on our services. But we don't want to discourage people from coming forward.”
Ms Kenny said that the organisation did its best to respond to people within a few days of making a call, but their therapy service was always under pressure. One in Four's 2023 report will be launched by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee on Thursday.
“I think that speaks to the nature and complexity of the impact of child and sexual abuse. There's a large percentage of our clients who need long term therapy, and that takes time. So that service needs to be properly resourced. Survivors deserve the support and the time that they need to help and support them going forward.”
“For many people who we spoke to in the last number of months, it has been the first time that they've disclosed their abuse, which is, again, a huge leap for them to take. And it shows an enormous amount of resilience and hope. But again, we want to be able to respond to that and honour the courage that they took to come forward.”
Ms Kenny expressed concern that the necessary legislation was not yet in place to protect children from cyber abuse. “I think we need to start really acknowledging the harm that children are exposed to now. So we're not in this situation or continue to be in this situation where people feel that they can't come forward to talk about their experiences of abuse and we're under pressure to respond.
“Nobody likes talking about child sexual abuse. Nobody is comfortable whether you're a survivor or a family member. But there probably isn't a family in the country who hasn't been impacted. And we need to start getting comfortable and we need to start having these conversations openly with our families, with our communities.
"And this is a pervasive issue, and it's really important that we start to address it from lots of different angles in terms of prevention, in terms of supporting people and to support people to come forward. So we can't arrest our way out of this problem. We need to start to embrace this from a very different perspective.”
One in Four offers advocacy, therapy and prevention programmes as well as family psychoeducation groups. It delivered 3,054 advocacy sessions to 515 people in 2023.
41 percent of clients were from Dublin and 46 per cent from the rest of Ireland. 48 per cent of the advocacy's clients were male, which the support organisation says highlights the importance of support for all genders.
The organisation delivered 6,562 sessions to 856 individuals in 2023. The waiting list for treatment increased by 42 percent to 118 clients. One in Four delivered 3,327 individual and group therapy sessions last year to 341 clients.
