Several women who have suffered serious sexual abuse have appeared before an Oireachtas committee in support of a Bill that would allow offenders to be ordered to stay away from their victims after their release from prison.
The new private member’s Bill would allow the courts to make safety or protection orders at the time an offender was being sentenced but directed at after they are released.
As matters stand, former victims have to go to court after their attacker is released and make an application for an order based on alleged fresh harassment or intimidation by the offender.
“They have to wait until something happens,” the sponsor of the bill, Sinn Féin deputy Matt Carthy, told the Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs, and Migration. “That isn’t good enough.”
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Shaneda Daly told the committee that when her father was being sentenced to 15 years in jail for sexually abusing her all through her childhood, the judge said he was never to contact her again.
“Unfortunately I was to find out that there is no law to enforce this,” she said.
“I personally don’t want to go back to court and get any kind of order for protection as I feel it would be more trauma added to my already traumatised life,” she said.
Paula Doyle, who was raped by a man who had been stalking her prior to the attack, said the proposed Bill would only apply to new sexual assault cases.
“My case is not new. My offender ... will be released. And when he is, I will be still living in fear, not just for myself, but for my children, who have already grown up in the shadow of this case.”
Those who have been subjected to serious sexual assault deserved “justice and protection”, she said.
The availability of protection orders should be “automatic and enforceable for victims whose offenders are approaching release,” she said. “The risk does not end at sentencing.”
Leona O’Callaghan, whose abuser was sentenced to 17 years for raping her when she was a child, said the memory of the attack “freezes my nervous system”.
“Without a protection order against him, I dread the day he is released,” said O’Callaghan, whose abuser was jailed after she came forward as an adult and complained about the abuse.
Even in prison her attacker had committed further violent crimes, yet she, who had been responsible for his being jailed, was “meant to feel safe from revenge when he is released soon”.
“I don’t need to prove he is a threat to me,” she said. “So protect me.”
Sonya Stokes, a survivor of serious sexual violence, said she lived with fear, trauma and anxiety, yet it was only on April 30th that she was informed that her attacker, who had been released from prison, had died on December 5th. “I feel very let down,” she said.
The onus, she said, should not be on her or other victims to go to the courts and seek protection after their attackers are released.
Donna Von Allemann, of Rape Crisis Ireland, and Sarah Benson, of Women’s Aid, spoke in favour of the proposed law but said it could be extended to cover a wider variety of scenarios.
Women frequently live in fear of retribution when an abuser is released, said Benson, yet they must wait for something to happen before they can seek a protection order.
“The absence of recent abuse bars them from obtaining a safety order, even where that absence is solely a consequence of the abuser’s imprisonment.”
