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Today Sophie has a difficult message about how we deal with child abuse. Few would disagree with some of her advice. We need to listen to and educate children, she says. We need to create stabler and healthier homes and work on better mental-health awareness and sex education. I was about eight when my brother started coming into my room,” James says. “It began with gentle interference but, over time, became more serious and specific. He told me that if I ever told anyone we would both go to prison. It went on for about three years, until shortly after my dad died. Kenneally told his therapist that he was attracted to women but didn’t believe he could have a relationship. He felt inadequate and unwanted. “He now recognises that he abused children because he didn’t feel threatened by them,” the intermediary says. You can report concerns to Tusla, and learn more about how the support process works, at tusla.ie/children-first/ how-do-i-report-abuse Child sex abusers are around us; we just don’t know it. Eileen Finnegan is clinical director of One in Four and the manager of Phoenix, a treatment programme for sex offenders that the organisation sees as a core part of child protection.

If, as therapists also advise, we are to develop more therapy for abusers and potential abusers, we must look beyond the revulsion that we feel about child abusers, beyond calls to castrate or jail them for life – simplistic solutions that leave children at risk. Waiting more than a yearThe Department of Justice's Office for Internet Safety is at internetsafety.ie SEX ABUSE: WHAT WE HAVEN’T LEARNT FROM HISTORY Tallon and Cherry say that intervention and therapy make young abusers less likely to reoffend. Without therapy they have the highest recidivism rate. Part of One in Four's approach involves working with the families of victims. “Early on we realised that we were the ones managing all the risk, and we couldn’t shoulder that burden alone,” Eileen Finnegan says. “We teach families to recognise risk factors, including the abuser’s mood, whether they are being manipulative and if they are isolated.” Being made to feel special adds to the child’s confusion, Sophie says. “ ‘This person is kind to me, but they do this thing that makes me feel terrible and scared.’ This can be so murky for children.

Families can be torn apart by abuse. A caring mother, for example, might fall out with her abusive brother or partner, but the grandparents could then believe and side with the abuser. In Sophie’s case it was a mother failing to stop her partner from abusing. Sophie says that she has forgiven her mother. James’s brother Sex is natural. Male attraction to visual cues is natural. Video pornography is not. I believe that centuries of sexual repression is helping fuel pornography’s popularity. But honest intimate relationships will liberate sexuality, not watching porn stars. Consuming pornography is like trying to nourish oneself with junk food. Parents need to explain this to their children and establish no-porn rules. His brother did send him a written apology. “Was this enough for me? Nothing is enough. Chopping off his arms and legs would not be enough. I have realised that the only way through is acceptance and forgiveness. Not for him but because it is what I need.” Stop It Now! Kenneally did not abuse primarily because he was sexually attracted to the boys, much as a rapist is not overcome with lust. But, perhaps worse, like most sex offenders he was asserting power, control and dominance over people who could not defend themselves. Abusers are around us There was further abuse in Sophie’s family. Her biological father was taken away when she was three because he had sexually abused another sister, Rose, although he never harmed Sophie.They are seeking power, control, intimacy, revenge, anger or jealousy, and struggling to have their needs met in an appropriate way. We worked with one young lad who was feeling very controlled by his father; his sexual abuse of children was framed around how he was in control now. Other abusers may be angry at being bullied and take it out on younger children – although, of course, most bullying victims never abuse other children.” We teach our kids to say ‘no’ to cigarettes, why not pornography? Is everyone afraid of looking like a prude? Are parents too embarrassed? Not sure what the problem is, but people are increasingly pro porn. It was the same with cigarettes in their day and it took decades before the tide turned. When it did turn it was due to campaigns by smoke-free celebrities and cultural heroes. The same campaign needs to begin with porn. Where are the sexually liberated men and women with social capital who will stand up for living and loving porn-free? May you please step forward! This set a tone for the following decades – but the existence of abuse could not be completely suppressed. Newspapers reported on court cases involving “indecent assault” or “unlawful carnal knowledge” of children. The Garda interviewed him, told him to obtain psychiatric treatment and stay away from the boys,” the intermediary says. “He stopped coaching basketball and says that he kept a low profile because he knew that he could be prosecuted, but he now wishes they had done so in the 1980s.”

Tusla has established a steering group for the development of sexual-abuse services that includes the HSE, the Garda, the Probation Service, Cari and the Children’s Hospital Group (which consists of Temple Street; Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin; and the National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght). James similarly has confused feelings about his brother. “He is about 14 years older than me and has learning difficulties. He’s a very good-looking man and could function in the real world, but he’s socially awkward and has limited intelligence.” But even were this solution to be pursued as a policy there would be other obstacles. Few psychologists know how to support sexual offenders or want to take on such difficult work. Funding and infrastructure are also inadequate. Bill Kenneally, the imprisoned abuser, claims that he could have been stopped. “He’s not blaming society at all, and he fully accepts responsibility,” our intermediary says. “But he hopes that maybe, if potential child abusers had somewhere they could go for help before they committed a crime, it might help protect children from people like him.”

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As in Sophie’s family, some abusers target vulnerable women with low self-esteem and limited or chequered relationships; it makes their children easier targets. Our current image of child sex abusers in Ireland, and our approach to them, may be putting young people at risk. If we are to keep children safe we may have to gain a new understanding of the problem and make some unpalatable changes to the way we deal with it. Sophie’s story Justin, 22, Redding: Why go to your mom without talking to him first? Yes, looking at porn is quite normal today, but it is not okay to make others uncomfortable, especially — yikes — a little sister.

Like smoking cigarettes was considered safe and normal in its heyday, pornography is now having its heyday and many people, young and old, male and female, are hotly defending it as “normal.” We’ve had around 300 people on the Phoenix programme,” Eileen Finnegan says. “All of them had difficulties around puberty, sex and relationships. We very rarely see paedophiles on the programmes. Most of the abusers we work with are not interested in sexual gratification; they’re interested in grooming a family and a child and exercising power and control.” Rarity of paedophilia This week One in Four, an organisation that provides therapeutic support and advocacy for adult survivors of child sexual abuse, said that it saw 178 new and 485 ongoing clients in 2015, of whom 43 per cent were men and 57 per cent women. It took James many years to deal with the abuse. He first reported it to his older sister just before he started secondary school. “She agreed not to tell Mum. She said, ‘I want you to know that I believe you, and I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.’ That is so important for a child. She found the right words to put me at ease and kept me alive with her support and love.” During my teens there was a deep and profound sadness that I couldn’t shake, so I drank a lot and took drugs. I carried self-loathing, humiliation, fear and shame. When I was 18 my mum brought me to a psychiatrist. When I told her what had happened she thought I was confused.

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The survivors of his crimes are suing the Garda and the State because they say that senior gardaí, staff at the South Eastern Health Board and members of Fianna Fáil knew about the sexual abuse in the 1980s but didn’t act. We run on a budget of €700,000,” says Mary Flaherty, the chief executive. “An extra €800,000 in funding would allow us to bring our waiting lists down to a much more manageable five or six months. This dovetailed with another emerging notion: that of stranger danger. The belief that strange men prowled communities, snatching children, gained traction following the disappearance of Philip Cairns, in 1986. Only a minority of sexual abusers are strangers, but media coverage distorted the reality.