The Probation Service in the Republic and the Probation Board of Northern Ireland are finalising an all-Ireland strategy for assessing the risk posed by adult sex offenders. Kitty Holland reports.
Michael Donnellan, the director of the Probation Service, said it had been in "ongoing discussions" with its counterpart in the North as well as with the prison psychology service "to develop an all-Ireland strategy in terms of the assessment and treatment of sex offenders".
Speaking at a conference in Dublin yesterday, organised by the Children At Risk in Ireland (Cari) organisation, he commented: "Benefits accruing from this process would be similar procedures, a shared language and a more coherent framework for our joint co-operation. We hope to finalise our discussions early in 2007."
He told The Irish Times this would enable both services to better share information about low-, medium- and high-risk offenders and to monitor them.
He said 25 per cent of all sex offences in Ireland were perpetrated by adolescents.
"And yet the probation service does not get many adolescent sex offenders referred from the courts. We're getting very few."
He said while some may be "picked up" by the HSE and social services, sex offending by teenagers "is a hidden problem, is a silent problem".
Cari clinical director, Majella Ryan, said it was important to note that most children who had experienced sexual abuse did not go on to sexually offend.
President Mary McAleese, opening the conference, de- scribed the subject matter as "tough and very, very difficult".
She said society as a whole came to the issue of child abuse "contrite and humbled by our ignorance, or misplaced trust, our failure to properly monitor the safety of children and our failure to listen carefully enough to the small voices who dared to speak out of their pain".