Guide for teachers on sexual abuse

Potentially, five or six children in a class of 30 pupils have been sexually abused. This is the cold, stark reality which teachers in Ireland face in their daily work routines. Yet most teachers do not know it and few get trained to spot sexual abuse. Today the Government is releasing new guidelines on child sexual abuse for professionals who are in contact with children. These guidelines stress the need for training for people who work with children. But for the moment teachers remain the best-placed professionals to notice the signs of abuse and yet are severely lacking in training which would enable them to deal with it.

Angela McCarthy in Dublin's Rape Crisis Centre runs one of the few courses for teachers on sexual abuse. Overcoming the myths surrounding sexual abuse is one of the first issues she tackles with the teachers on the course. Child sexual abuse is a rare occurrence; boys are not sexually abused; sexual abuse only occurs in families that are dysfunctional and deprived; women do not sexually abuse: these are just some of the misconceptions that people have, which are in themselves a danger.

"Myths serve as a protective function in that they keep us in denial where we are happy to be because facing reality might just be too difficult," McCarthy says. Teachers are taught to watch out for signs of sexual abuse such as changes in behaviour, such as if a child is over-sexualised with other pupils or teachers or if a child reveals a knowledge which would be inappropriate for his or herage.

The course also points out to teachers that some children may block out abuse as a means for coping with what is happening and so no indications will be apparent. "Many pupils in front of teachers who will show no signs, just desperately want to be the same as everyone else and don't want to say anything," explains McCarthy. "The school can even be an oasis of safety or consistency - something they haven't got elsewhere," she says. But McCarthy stresses that while teachers are urged to be alert to the signs of sexual abuse they are advised not to go witch-hunting for victims. She also says that false memory syndrome, where abuse is imagined, is something that teachers should be aware of and never to suggest anything to pupils who make a disclosure.

Dealing with a disclosure is another important area of the course. "Not promising to keep it a secret. That's the bit that people find hard," says McCarthy. "How, when a child has trusted you, can you say you can't keep it a secret?" McCarthy also goes through the Government guidelines for schools on child sex abuse which state the procedure for reporting abuse. "It is not up to the teacher to conduct an investigation," says McCarthy.

It was this particular aspect of the course which made the biggest impression on Triona Daly, a teacher in the Holy Family girls' national school in Askea, Carlow. "Because of the nature of the job and the nature of schools you feel the onus of solving the problem is on you," she says. "But the responsibility is limited. I'm part of the follow-on process of the disclosure, I'm not the whole process," says Daly, who attended the course last year, in its first year. Teachers are fearful not only of the burden of dealing with a disclosure but also of confidentiality, according to Daly. She says that having done the course in the Rape Crisis Centre, it is clear to her now that passing on information about abuse will not mean hot gossip in the locality but will be handled appropriately from one professional to another.

Daly says the course has changed her outlook towards her pupils. "I now see beyond the uniforms. I see 30 different people with different situations. You don't know what they have come from," she says. Disruptiveness in class, not doing homework and bad behaviour are something she now will question instead of just correcting - and this is an idea she is also bringing to other members of staff. The course on sexual abuse runs for a week at two different times over the summer. The Rape Crisis Centre also does shorter day-long courses and conducts talks for teachers over a couple of hours. The ISPCC also runs courses on sexual abuse and childhood support workers work with teachers on the issue. Angela McCarthy recognises that it isn't easy for teachers to make time for such courses but says that some kind of training is important. "There's a big difference between getting a booklet from the Department of Education and being given the opportunity to say `I'm worried if I report it

I'll have to take part in a court case and take the repercussions'," says McCarthy. Although the Stay Safe Programme and Religion and Sexuality Programme, which are being conducted in schools, bring about an awareness for teachers of sexual abuse, there is still little specific training on it.

Derek Power, spokesman for the Irish Association of Victims and Survivors of Child Abuse, says that in addition to informing teachers on how to spot signs of abuse and how to report them, they also need to be taught how to deal with children after abuse has been discovered. "I counselled a 14-year-old who had been abused and who was expelled from school twice. At no time was any recourse given to the fact that he was abused," says Power, who was himself abused while at school.

While Power's abuse at the hands of the school principal was never detected by teachers at his school, he does not blame them. "We can only blame those who committed the abuse and those who hid them," he says.