Maíria Cahill case forms backdrop to debate about abuse in North

Northern Ireland has a problem of child sexual exploitation, a new inquiry has found, but it's not in the realm of the abuse of young people that took place in Rotherham and Rochdale in England.

The North is a different place, so there were no such "ethnic dimensions" as were present there, Minister for Health Jim Wells of the DUP said. The North may not have ethnic gangs but it has paramilitary gangs. In that context it was not surprising that during discussion of Prof Kathleen Marshall's report Maíria Cahill's name arose.

The independent report was ordered last year after it emerged the Police Service of Northern Ireland had identified 22 young people based in care homes who may have been sexually exploited outside the homes.

The Sinn Féin chairwoman of the Assembly health committee, Maeve McLaughlin, walked into an ambush with her response to Wells’s opening statement. She found it “very weak in terms of accountability”.

DUP MLA Pam Cameron was first out of the blocks, saying that considering the Cahill case there was "a collective responsibility"in relation to accountability.

Scale of

exploitation

Prof Marshall’s inquiry was about trying to identify the scale of the child sexual exploitation problem and finding a means to tackle it.

She found up that to 145 children and young people were at risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) but was told that this figure really was the “tip of the iceberg”.

She referred to “the involvement of powerful individuals with purported links to paramilitary organisations” but had to acknowledge that “no one suggested that CSE was a targeted activity of paramilitary groups”.

The concentration now must be on the PSNI and other relevant agencies co-operating to further clarify the exploitation’s extent, and then to do something about it.