Vulnerable children in care in Ireland are clearly being targeted for sexual exploitation and abuse by “gangs of predatory men,” a stark new report from UCD has revealed.
It reported numerous cases where girls in the care of Tusla, the State’s child and family agency, were “being coerced or enticed to provide sex acts to multiple men in exchange for a variety of goods” including clothes and jewellery.
Predatory gangs of men would identify residents where girls in care are being accommodated — and would wait around accommodation centres, even going so far as to wait in hotel lobbies where under-age girls were staying.
In one shocking revelation, the study revealed that men were “hanging around hotel lobbies” in order to sexually exploit children that were being accommodated there as a temporary State care solution.
The report expressed fears that sexual exploitation of children is going “under the radar” in Ireland, while drawing parallels with child sex abuse that went on in Rotherham and Rochdale in the UK – which was characterised by a failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse that took place from the 1980s until the late 2010s.
The new report, funded by Community Foundation Ireland, and carried out by University College Dublin’s (UCD), details cases of girls in care in Ireland being taken to hotels by men to be sexually abused and exploited, with both professionals and hoteliers feeling unable to properly identify or stop the exploitation.
Sexual exploitation was often “intertwined” with substance misuse, the survey reported. Researchers reported how it was “very common” for victims to get involved with drug dealing and drug gangs, with drugs sometimes used as a “payment” for sex.
The Irish study was based on interviews with staff and organisations who worked with children in care, with 21 key stakeholders from 14 different agencies representing children from a variety of sectors. These included residential care, homelessness, education, social care, advocacy services, and online policing.
The report, ‘Protecting Against Predators,’ by Dr Mary Canning, Dr Marie Keenan and Ruth Breslin from UCD school of social policy, was published on Thursday.
Interviewees described harrowing instances of sexual exploitation of children which occurred within the family of the child or young person, and within residential care centres.
The findings have sparked calls from the researchers for an immediate investigation into the exploitation by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) which oversees Tusla services.
TARGETING GIRLS IN RESIDENTIAL CARE
The report revealed that care staff and those working with children and young people were “aware” of the risk from people from outside the care home environment “who target vulnerable minors and sexually exploit them”.
Researchers said there were “many instances” described by interviewees as the ‘targeting of children in residential care’. While children were “clearly” being targeted by groups of men, one interviewee told the survey that they feared the anecdotal evidence “seen with my own eyes” was “only the tip of the iceberg”.
They said that men in various areas were “getting to know” residential places where girls were going to be vulnerable.
Researchers pointed out that such instances were supported by recent press reports that An Garda Síochána have an ongoing criminal investigation into an alleged child exploitation ‘ring’ that targeted teenage girls in State care, who were brought to hotels and allegedly sexually abused.
The report quoted one interviewee as saying: “[T]he residential centres certainly seem to be the place… If girls are in the residential placements on their own, they absolutely have been targeted there. And if they’re sharing, if it’s an all-girls unit, then certainly they will be targeted.
“Because there is the sense that these girls are very, very vulnerable and for some reason or other, men in the areas are getting to know these places through the school links and through the internet… they are certainly being targeted by men in their twenties and thirties, you know, and maybe the girls they’re meeting them through school or afterschool and, like as well, through the internet.”
The report detailed, in the words of another interviewee, allegations that there was a group of men in an unnamed city in Ireland who “targeted” a particular unit and tried to “befriend” the girls in that place.
“They’re sort of being in the neighbourhood. It’s quite close to the centre of town,” the interview said in relation to the case. “So, you know, if the girls are going into town or anything, it’s quite easy for the men to bump into them accidentally. Now, I know that this is a problem for the unit that, you know, there’s a definite group targeting young women coming out of that. And I’d imagine that’s replicated in other places.”
‘GANGS OF MEN EXPLOITING CHILDREN’
On other occasions, the study said, men were “hanging around hotel lobbies in order to sexually exploit children that were being accommodated thereas a temporary State care solution.
“What is happening is that children in care are being accommodated in hotels and while there is a social care worker on site, the children are exposed to all kinds of stuff, including people who would exploit them sexually,” the report claimed.
An interviewee said that it was highly likely that the “guys” who were targeting girls in care “very quickly get the lowdown” that girls in temporary State care were in the hotels
“And you can bet your bottom dollar those “f*****s —excuse my language—those guys who are targeting these girls very quickly get the lowdown on that [girls staying in hotels as a temporary State care solution] and they’ll [those guys will] be hanging around hotel lobbies and—you know, anyway, but you just know…this is what happens,” the respondent said.
“[T]here have been many stories that we’ve heard about gangs of men who are exploiting these children under the care of Tusla in these hotels, or [they] take them out of the hotels for the purpose of sexual exploitation,” the report further claimed.
‘GROUPS OF MEN CLEARLY TARGETING CHILDREN IN CARE’
Hotels were “frequently mentioned” by participants in the study as the location where the sexual exploitation of children occurred, with children and young people being taxied to the hotels from the residential units where they were being cared for by the State.
One interviewee detailed how in the last couple of years, there had been some “really dreadful” cases of young people who were leaving the residential unit “on a daily basis” late in the evening and returning the next morning in taxis, “sometimes in very poor shape having taken drugs, being picked up at hotels allaround the city.” The report describes a “bunch of people” who were “taxiing kids all over the city” – calling them in the evening, and bringing them to hotels.
“[T]hey [young girls] go to meet their boyfriend in a hotel room and there’s like five other guys there and, you know, they have to do things with those other people,” another response read.
“There’s groups of men… they’re clearly targeting children in care. And I think it’s only the tip of the iceberg what I’m seeing with my own eyes,” one interviewee said.
The report noted that interviewees reported that “they were hearing from hotels across Ireland of their concerns that the sexual exploitation of children is happening on their premises.” However, hotel management and staff were unsure or felt ill-equipped to deal with and report what they were encountering, further highlighting the inability or discomfort to name what they were seeing as sexual exploitation, researchers said.
In addition, it was noted that sexual exploitation of children was happening not just in cities in Ireland but in “small discreet hotels around the country” from high-end hotels to budget hotels.
The report also described cases where children aged 15 or 16 would receive payment in the form of new clothes or jewellery after meeting up with “predatory men” who would groom the girls by making the victim believe that they were in a romantic relationship with them. Such relationships were typically characterised by an imbalance of power, where the (usually male) abuser was older than the (usually female) victim.
Many times, the young person didn’t consider the exploitation sexual abuse, but would consider themselves to be “in a relationship” with the abuser, who would, in many cases, be in “his twenties or thirties”.
“PARALLELS” WITH ROTHERHAM
The report also outlined a sense that sexual exploitation of children was a “difficult issue to talk about” for many of those interviewed. Researchers said this difficulty arose not only for the victims, but also for their caring and supporting them, and for society at large.
The issue was described as “difficult” and uncomfortable to talk about – with several references made by interviewees to “suspicions’ ‘ held by care staff which seemed “almost impossible or somehow inappropriate” to talk about. Instead, interviewees spoke of a “whisper,” “rumour” or “feeling” among professionals.
“[…] My gut feeling tells me it [sexual exploitation] is widespread but it’s under the radar, in that I don’t hear people—sort of I don’t hear people jumping up and down and screaming about it, which maybe they should be doing,” one respondent is quoted as saying.
Researchers went as far as to reference the abuse perpetrated by gangs of men in Rochdale and Rotherham in England, stating:
“Such discomfort is especially worrying in the light of evidence of the sexual exploitation of children reported in Rochdale and Rotherham in the UK, as discussed in the literature review, where many failures existed of agencies unable to see and intervene in systems of pimping and sexual exploitation of children here.
“Participants in this study are also concerned that sexual exploitation of children may be widespread here but is not being talked about and instead is kept under the radar.”
The study said it was hard not to draw “parallels” with exploitation scandals in the UK cities.
“We haven’t seen anything that’s been as close to the kind of level of community organisation as, say, what went on in Rotherham, but we’d see small pockets of that. You know, like we’d see small community pockets of areas where these girls, these young women are being targeted mainly for drugs … and it’s about drugs and sex,” one respondent is quoted as saying.
“While sexual exploitation by networks may not operate to the same extent as reported in the UK, nevertheless one of the participants made the following comparison between their city and Rotherham (where drug-related criminal- it was closely interwoven with the appalling sexual exploitation of children that had been perpetrated there),” researchers stated.
BBC reports that an inquiry into the abuse of some 1,400 children in Rotherham by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage found that the rape and sexual exploitation continued for years both because the girls were disbelieved and because some in authority feared being thought of as “racist”.
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