Search Results for 'Sexual assault'

A 16-year-old Roscommon schoolgirl has told a Central Criminal Court jury that her father sexually assaulted and raped her over a three year period.

If crimes are ever scaled on the amount of horror and anger they provoke, then the sexual assault of children is one that is often near the top. There are few offences that cause this sort of outrage in a community, that go to the heart of every family, that cause such division. It is the fear of such an allegation that has sadly led to a reluctance by many people to become involved in activities that bring them into contact with children in intimate situations, for fear that such an allegation may be made in these increasingly litigious times.

Is an apology enough? I don’t know. Only a person who was abused at the hands of the religious nuns, priests and brothers can answer that question. Would prosecutions help in the healing process? Yet another question I have no authority to answer.

Plans by the HSE to build a permanent sexual assault treatment unit (SATU) in Merlin Park have been put on the long finger due to budgetary constraints. A temporary facility opened last month at Parkmore.

A Midlands man has been sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court on two counts of sexual assault.

Sinn Féin councillor Thérèse Ruane has said that the scenes in the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee last week, which have outraged people across the country, underline the need for reform of procedures in the courts service. A large group of people, mostly middle-aged and elderly men, queued up inside the court last Wednesday to shake hands with a man convicted of sexual assault against a 22-year-old woman. They had to pass by the victim as they showed solidarity with the perpetrator.