Child and family agency TUSLA says there have been 14 cases of suspected sexual exploitation of children in its care to date this year.
The figure was revealed in a Dáil exchange after last month’s devastating report by academics at University College Dublin (UCD) which said that children in state care are being sexually exploited by “gangs of predatory men,”
The report said children are being “coerced or enticed to provide sex acts to multiple men” in exchange for “a variety of goods” including clothes and jewellery, while parallels were drawn to grooming gang scandals in the UK where thousands of underage girls were raped over decades.
Vulnerable girls in state care were led to the belief that their older abusers were ‘boyfriends’ and in some cases were taxied to hotel rooms to be abused, with reports of men waiting outside care facilities in order to access their victims.
Last year, there were twenty such cases reported to the Gardaí while there were nine such reports in 2021.
Cases of suspected sexual exploitation were only recorded separately from cases of sexual abuse from the year 2021 after worries that girls were being targeted by rings of men came to light.
Last week, Taosieach Leo Varadkar confirmed that investigations were being made on foot of the UCD report after being questioned by Gript’s Ben Scallan.
"They are being investigated": Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirms that allegations of children being abused by gangs of predatory men under State care within Tusla are currently being looked into.#gript pic.twitter.com/seApvZESS2
— gript (@griptmedia) July 6, 2023
TD Carol Nolan called the revelations ‘terrifying, deeply disturbing, and sickening’ saying that TUSLA had “failed at a catastrophic level” to protect children from sexual exploitation.
“Clearly, the procedures against child sexual exploitation introduced by Tusla in recent years have failed miserably. They have failed at a catastrophic level for these children who are being groomed and exploited by gangs of predatory men.” the Laois Offaly TD said.