A PUBLIC inquiry into the handling of complaints against the former Drogheda surgeon Michael Shine must be established immediately, say a number of organisations supporting child victims of rape and sexual assault.
The organisations – One in Four, the Rape Crisis Centre, the Children’s Rights Alliance, Barnardos and Dignity 4 Patients – have also called for a compensation scheme for victims of the disgraced consultant surgeon.
Shine was struck off the medical register last November by the Medical Council. The council received 29 complaints against him about inappropriate behaviour against young men and boys. It pursued nine and found him guilty in three cases.
It is alleged, however, that he sexually abused over 130 young patients at Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda between 1964 and 1996. Both young men and boys, and young women and girls were allegedly assaulted.
Alleged assaults were typically carried out during medical examinations when parents and other staff were not present. Some young patients were repeatedly assaulted as both outpatients and as inpatients in the 32-year period.
There were emotional and angry statements given by victims at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, hosted by the Dignity 4 Patients organisation which was established in 1995 to support Shine’s victims and to fight for a public inquiry.
The press conference was also attended by representatives from One in Four, the RCC and Barnardos as well as health spokespersons from the Labour Party, Jan O’Sullivan, and Fine Gael, Dr James Reilly.
Bernadette Sullivan, a former nurse at Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital who founded Dignity 4 Patients, said Shine was enabled to operate for three decades by colleagues who turned a blind eye and by the Medical Missionaries who ran the hospital and who, she say, mishandled complaints.
Shine was tried in respect of three complaints, following a Garda investigation, at the Circuit Criminal Court in Dundalk in 2003 and acquitted by a jury after a full trial.
Ms Sullivan expressed concern that senior medical colleagues of Shine were called to defend him, while the DPP failed to call any expert witness against him, including medical personnel counselling his victims.
She said if original complaints against him, made to the hospital, had been properly handled he would not have been able to continue assaulting young patients. She said she had been seeking a meeting with Minister for Health Mary Harney to discuss an inquiry.
“I met Brian Cowen three weeks ago and asked him to intercede with Mary Harney to get a meeting. “We have not been given a meeting and she has not been in contact with me.”
In their joint statement the support groups said yesterday: “We call on Mary Harney to establish an independent inquiry to investigate the way in which the many credible allegations of sex abuse against Michael Shine were handled. The inquiry must examine the role played by the Medical Missionaries of Mary, the Health Board, the hospital authorities and the gardaí in allowing a powerful medical consultant to continue to sexually abuse young boys with impunity.”
The organisations also called on the Minister to put a compensation scheme in place for the victims.
A spokesman for the Minister said a meeting with Dignity 4 Patients was “being arranged”.
Rape Crisis 24-hour helpline 1 800 778888
