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Majority of rapes not reported

This article is from page 3 of the 2005-11-29 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG

ALMOST three quarters of all rapes committed in Co Clare are never reported to the Garda, information received by The Clare People would suggest.

In the first ever research of its kind, a group from the Law Faculty of NUI, Galway has been commis- sioned by the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland to put together concrete figures on how many rapes are not reported in Ireland each year. The

group also aim to discover the rea- sons why these rapes are not report- ed to the Gardai.

In their preliminary investiga- tion, the group discovered that 73 per cent of the calls received by the Limerick Rape Crisis Centre (LRCC) in 2004 were not reported to the Gardai. The LRCC deals with calls from Clare, Limerick and parts of Tipperary and runs a clinic in Ennis two days a week.

Miriam Duffy is the co-ordinator of the LRCC and believes that there

are a number of different reasons why people are unwilling to report incidents of rape.

“It has been shown that 90 to 92 per cent of rapist are known to their victims which can make it difficult,” said Ms Duffy. “As well as this, the investigations undertaken by the Gardai can often take a number of months and this can deter people from coming forward.”

One of the main goal of the re- search, which is being headed up by Ennis man Conor Hanley, is to

evaluate how the criminal justice system responds to sexual violence. When the study is completed in 2007 it will make recommenda- tions on possible changes to the De- partment of Justice.

The amount of people who don’t report rapes could be as high as 90 per cent according to Deirdre Hea- ly, who is the primary researcher for the project.

“Almost half of the people sur- veyed didn’t tell anyone at all and I would imagine that 90 per cent will

be a more likely figure than 73 per cent when our research 1s complet- ed,” said Ms Healy.

The group are appealing to peo- ple who have suffered sexual abuse since 2002 and were aged 18 or over at the time to contact them in con- fidence.

Participants can obtain more in- formation by contacting Deirdre Healy on 091-495374 or check out www.end-the-silence.com

The Limerick Rape Crisis Centre can be reached at 1800 311511.

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