Child abuse: the State is found guilty

In 1919, the revolutionary Dail adopted its famous Democratic Programme which read in part: It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland. This clause shall not, however, apply to those children who suffer from mental or physical disabilities, to the troubled, the traumatised, the abused, the orphaned, the lost, the homeless, the hurt or the awkward, who shall be, so far as possible, ignored, neglected or otherwise abandoned.

OK, that last sentence wasn't actually written down. But it must have been a kind of secret protocol, or a footnote buried in the small print at the back of the new Republic's social contract. For each and every government of the State has clearly been aware of its content and has followed its dictates almost religiously.

As recently as last week, the State was in the High Court denying in effect that it had any obligations to provide a young man with autism, Jamie Sinnott, with the means and facilities requisite for his proper education and training. The State had responded to his needs with "official indifference and persistent procrastination", said Mr Justice Barr.

But the State, should it decide to appeal the ruling, might well have a case. It could show there was no discrimination against Jamie Sinnott, and that official indifference has been shown to every other child with mental, physical or social disabilities. As evidence, it could cite the research published last week by Patricia Kelleher, Carmel Kelleher and Maria Corbett in the Focus Ireland report, "Left Out On Their Own". The researchers talked to young people coming out of special schools, foster care, residential care and probation hostels. They looked at the circumstances of these young people six months after leaving and then again two years later. What they found, even by the appalling standards of provision for children and young people in Ireland, is quite shocking.

THE young people tracked by the researchers were, almost by definition, the ones whose circumstances had been so bad they could not be entirely ignored by the State. They are the tip of a much larger iceberg of child poverty and neglect. Ireland has one of the worst rates of child poverty in the EU. One in four Irish children live in families with less than half the average income.

While the basic minimum cost of rearing a child averages out at £32 a week, the combined child welfare payment (made up of child benefit and social welfare) is £21.16 per week, leaving a deliberate and obvious gap between large numbers of children and the fulfilment of the basic needs identified by the Democratic Programme. Yet even against this backdrop of general indifference and cruelty, the young people studied by the Focus researchers ought to stand out as extreme cases. Forty-one per cent of those leaving health board care had suffered sexual abuse.

The same proportion had experienced domestic violence. A similarly large section had physical or learning disabilities or mental health problems such as clinical depression, eating disorders, or suicidal tendencies. Surely, however bad the system might be, it must be capable of looking after these most vulnerable and deeply hurt young people?

It isn't. A quarter of those in the study were not even placed in the kind of care that was appropriate to their needs. Children suffering severe trauma because of sexual abuse were placed in secure detention units, as if they were the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of a crime.

Even more disturbing, though, is what happens when these young people have to leave the special school or hostel to which they have been sent. What happens, for very many of them, is addiction, homelessness, exploitation and crime. After two years, over 40 per cent of the young people who had been to special schools and 30 per cent of those coming out of health board care had problems with addiction.

Fourteen per cent of those who had been in health board care were thought to be involved in prostitution. Sixty-eight per cent of those leaving health board care and a third of those coming out of special schools had experienced homelessness. And 66 per cent of those who left special schools ended up in prison or another place of detention within three years. The State, to put it crudely, has been remarkably good at taking vulnerable, neglected and abused children and turning them into drug addicts, prostitutes and criminals.

Between them, the Sinnott case and the Focus report point to a consistent and deepseated set of official attitudes to children with special social and educational needs. If they have functioning parents, let the family take care of them. If they don't, then, after we have fulfilled our unavoidable functions, let them go to the dogs.

For a long time, children in trouble were treated as objects of charitable concern who could be handed over to church institutions to do with, quite literally, as they pleased. Then when the cruelty and violence of those institutions became inconvenient, a hopelessly inadequate patchwork of public and voluntary services was supposed to take their place.

We remain far more willing to praise the heroism of extraordinary mothers who do battle with the State to secure the most basic needs of their children than to change the shameful conditions which make such heroism necessary. And we still love to trot out, without irony, phrases such as family values and treating all the children of the nation equally. Such phrases should pass our lips only in a bitter joke.