This week, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan launched the ‘Consent Matters’ project in Waterford. The collaborative initiative, announced by the Department of Justice, sets out to tackle sexual violence and harrassent, having received €150,000 from a fund taken from the proceeds of crime seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau.
In a press release I received this week, the Department said that the project is to create “a safe, respectful and positive culture of consent across the country.”
The project, the press release continues, will do this by involving educational, statutory and community stakeholders throughout Waterford City and County. The idea that sex need only be “safe, respectful, and positive” is, in my opinion, not something which will ultimately serve any of us very well.
We can all agree that it’s a good thing there’s an attempt to reduce sexual assaults. The Central Statistics Office, which has reported a rise in sexual offences, defines sexual violence as “a range of non-consensual experiences, from non-contact experiences to non-consensual sexual intercourse.”
Earlier this summer, the Courts Service also said it was dealing with a rise in new sexual offences cases. I found one report from a regional newspaper from last week which claims there has been a 65% increase in the number of incidents of rape and sexual assault recorded to Gardai in Louth. Nationally, the increase is reported to be 17%, according to the CSO.
The Government is admitting it sees a problem – and it is proposing a solution. There are, however, inadequacies in its solution and it is clear the conversation we are having is the same simplified one, over and over again, hindered by a fear of asking questions about a modern culture in which sex crimes are rising and in which more women, and men, traumatised by assault are making reports to Gardaí.
What is interesting is that we have had education around consent, and why it matters, for years. The lazer-like focus on consent is nothing new. Back in 2018, sexual consent was an area highlighted as part of a major review of mandatory relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in every school on this island. Even despite a national emphasis on consent, the number of reported sexual offences have not fallen. They’ve actually risen.
In 2018, the CSO reported there being 3,206 cases of reported sexual offences – this number was 3,288 in 2024. The message to kids is that basically, as long as you have secured consent from the other person, having sex is straightforward. It’s all part of a new orthodoxy that is now called being ‘sex-positive’ – but surely we all know it’s a bit more complicated than that. Hook-up culture has long been accepted as a result of the sexual liberation we are meant to enjoy. You’re entitled to treat the human being next to you like an object as long as he or she says yes. Get your gratification, and move on. Is that really a good way to treat anyone? The limits of relying solely on consent, and how it can be perceived differently by different people, has been highlighted time and time again in the courts.
One case which stands out in my mind, and one which highlighted so well the dangers of modern ‘dating’ – if you could call it that – was the 2022 case of former RTÉ journalist Mícheál Ó Leidhin, who was convicted and received a 15-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting a woman while she was sleeping. There have been various similar cases since, and it’s worth revisiting as it proves very well the collateral damage the culture of sexual liberation has produced.
As was reported and written about by my colleague John McGuirk at the time, the complainant was out drinking in a Dublin pub with her female friend when they met Ó Leidhin who knew her friend. This all happened back in 2018.
“The group went on to another pub and the woman and Ó Leidhin were kissing. At the end of the night, Ó Leidhin asked the woman to go back to his flat in south Dublin and they got a taxi. In the flat they were kissing and Ó Leidhin engaged in consensual sexual foreplay activity. He suggested that they have penetrative sex and the woman said no but left open the possibility that they might the next morning, Mr Delaney told the court.
“In his account to gardaí, Ó Leidhin said he was unable to get an erection. The woman then fell asleep and woke later to find him on top her of her and groping her breasts. She said she told him to stop and get off her. He did so and told her “sorry, I’m horny”. The court heard that the woman was annoyed and told the defendant that she was clearly asleep.
“The woman said she went back to sleep. Later that night Ó Leidhin drove her home and over the following days she texted him expressing annoyance at what had happened.
He met up with her and they spoke for an hour and “they agreed to differ” about what had happened, Garda Freyne said. In April 2019, the woman went to gardaí and made a complaint of sexual assault.”
After the victim said no, Ó Leidhin and the victim went back to sleep. He drove her home the next morning. In the succeeding days, she texted to him that she was annoyed, so he went to her home and apologised at length. The victim testified in court in her victim impact statement that her life had been forever altered by her encounter with Mr. O’Leidhin.
She said that in the intervening period, and ever since, she had made an attempt on her life, was unable to sleep, and was haunted by the memory of how vulnerable and exposed she felt at his hands.
The case stands out as a “hook up” that went horribly wrong, and effectively ruined two lives. The difficult thing is that millions of people before Mr O’Leighin did what he did and received a different kind of reaction from the person next to them in bed. Millions more have done it since.
That case, and others like it, serve as a reminder that there is a high price to pay for sexual liberation, for both men and women. It is not risk-free, physically or emotionally. Why is it that society has nothing to say about having a conversation about the risks of going home with a strange man, and ending up in his bed? Legal implications can clearly arise, as evidenced in the above case, but there are also physical and emotional risks.
But if you talk like this, you become the worst thing you can possibly be in Ireland – a prude. No one is more hated by the Irish establishment than someone with moral values. Take Maria Steen for example, who, before being blocked by the political establishment in her presidential campaign, was accused in an interview on RTE, of wanting to transport us all back to the 1930s.
Any worthy questions about sexual morality are brushed aside and considered old-fashioned morality policing. There are questions our culture will not face, but should. Is anything-goes okay, as long as it’s consensual, or is it legitimate to have a debate about whether sexual hedonism is something we should want to see celebrated? Can a person have lots of casual sex without it impacting their outlook on other moral issues? Instead of considering consent to be all that matters, why can’t we talk about sexual morality?
As a woman, I find these questions particularly important. Women, after all, run the highest risk when having casual sex. They pay the highest possible price, that being unplanned pregnancy. How can we say consent is all that matters, when the physical and emotional cost is so incredibly high? There were 10,852 abortions in Ireland last year, an increase of 62.8% since 2019. But you’ll be forever holding your breath waiting for a discussion about the link between the acceptance of casual sex and abortion.
The fear of being judgmental, of being a square, means that all sexual health campaigns, like the newest one in Waterford, must, as a matter of political necessity, promote sex as a fun, recreational activity which you should enjoy safely. There will be no delving into the multi-layered problems of a culture which allows us to treat each other as wholly disposable. We are forbidden to talk about the emotional risks, or the toll to long term self worth, that come with promiscuity. There are so many interesting and important elements that are ignored.
A good message would be that consent is not a silver bullet. Young people are increasingly opting out of casual sex – there is proof of this. Has sex simply become too messy for millennials to handle? A recent Times Generation Z study showed that the youth now take a more conservative view of sex than their parents. A lot of that is down to a feeling of deep dissatisfaction and a lack of contentment with a sexual culture centred around short-lived satisfaction and fleeting physical attraction. As many fed up youth take a break from dating entirely, on TikTok, the hashtag #celibacy has racked up more than 195 million views. In 2023 it was reported that Google searches for “celibacy” were up 90 per cent. All of this points to the reality: human beings are messy and complicated and where matters of the heart are concerned, consent is no silver bullet.
However, our government has no interest in examining the real complexities of the issues or in advocating sexual restraint. Discussion of the broader issues have become far too taboo. We should not let that make us fearful in prompting such a discussion.