Moral Panic - Child Sexual Abuse
	Professional Misconduct - Moira Woods
	Index 2002
	The Irish Times June 10, 2002 Child Sex Abuse Investigations Letter to the Editor by John O'Shea, Faughbawn, Muckross, Co Kerry. At the third national prosecutors' conference at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Ms Rhonda Turner, principal psychologist at St Louise's Unit, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, revealed that fewer than 1 per cent of the 2,104 allegations of child sex abuse made in the year 2000 resulted in convictions. Leaving aside that Ms Turner seems to have ignored the obvious questions these figures raise regarding the volume of possible false allegations, she stated that: "We were acutely aware that cases where children, whom we believe had been sexually abused, were not resulting in convictions" (The Irish Times, May 13th). Ms Turner inferred that a fault lay in the judicial process when dealing with these matters. I respectfully suggest that the fault lies nearer to home and is to be found in the suggestive methods employed by her colleagues in child protection which render a proper police investigation impossible once the "evidence" has been contaminated. It is now recognised through a considerable body of research that children are very vulnerable to adult social influence and child protection guidelines warn against allowing this to intrude on an investigation. However, in practice child protection will all too often overstep these guidelines. The result is that the guilty are able to go free but the innocent are caught in the impossible situation of having to prove a negative in order to establish their innocence. I had hoped that the finding of the Medical Council regarding Dr Moira Woods earlier in the year would open up debate on the reliability of current methods for investigating allegations of child sex abuse. Sadly this has not happened. The general perception seems to be that, while mistakes may have been made in the past, we have moved on and now have a reliable system. Unfortunately this is not so, although perhaps we would like to believe it is, so we can comfortably leave this difficult subject to those who tell us they know best how to deal with it. Essentially the same flaws in the system apply today just as they did when Dr Woods was director of the Rotunda Hospital's sexual assault unit. A person who falsely believes abuse has taken place can still easily and unwittingly influence a child into accommodating this false belief, sometimes to the extent of creating a false memory in the mind of the child. This person could be a significant adult in the child's life such as a parent, or a professional in the field such as an over-zealous social worker, or indeed an investigator from a child protection agency. Of course every allegation of child sex abuse must be taken seriously and investigated. However, the current methods of investigation are themselves wide open to abuse and harmful to the very children they seek to protect. Is it not extraordinary that the Garda currently looks to child protection agencies, with their very spurious methodologies, to investigate these allegations of serious criminal behaviour? Is there any other area of criminal investigation where the Garda would choose to abdicate responsibility in this way? I doubt it. But logic and reason rarely apply to this emotive area.