Gangs ‘targeting young people’ in residential care for sexual exploitation, study finds

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A new study has found that vulnerable young people in the care of the State are being “targeted” by gangs for sexual exploitation.

University College Dublin’s (UCD) Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) has uncovered evidence that young people who live in both Tusla care homes and those run by contracted providers are being targeted.

From interviews with staff and organisations, instances of exploitation of girls as young as 12-years-old, by older men, were reported.

Associate Researcher with SERP Ruth Breslin described some of the findings as “very disturbing” and said professionals from the sector have reported incidents where both younger males and females are singled out for exploitation by “predators”.

“We heard about situations where cars would be lining up at night, outside residential care homes, girls would be taken out, or would be coming out and into these cars and being taken to other locations, such as hotels, where they were being sexually exploited,” she said.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Ms Breslin said the study was told of instances where girls had gone “missing for a number of days from care homes” and returning in what professionals said was “quite a bad state”.

“Perhaps they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol and something very serious had happened to them during that time,” she said.

“They had been raped, they had been sexually assaulted, but not always were these girls coming back and explaining that, that is exactly what had happened to them.”

Ms Breslin said the research group spoke to professionals who oversee residential care homes.

Some felt there was “something going on for some girls” and they were aware of the targeting of residential care homes, but “it’s very hard for them to really get to the bottom of what’s going on”, Ms Breslin said.

“What’s happening with some of these young girls is that they’re saying, ‘I’m going out with my boyfriend… He’s somebody who loves me, he buys me presents’,” she added.

“Really what that is, that is a predator targeting that young person and really kind of preying on their vulnerability and drawing them in and perhaps preying on the fact that they may already have been abused even as a younger child, and they’re looking for care and attention and affection.”

Ms Breslin said where a crime is “very clearly committed” gardaí are alerted, but there is “discomfort amongst professionals to talk about the issues” and training is needed to highlight and address the issue.

Tusla has said it “aware and remains concerned about the increased risk of child sexual exploitation of vulnerable children and young people” and that it will consider the findings of the SERP study.

Ms Breslin said SERP is also calling for the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) to “quite urgently” undertaken an investigation in relation to the sexual exploitation of young people who are residents at care homes.

She said there are “vulnerable children here that really need to be protected”.

The Sexual Exploitation Research Programme (SERP) was established in 2017. It aims to strengthen the evidence base on current and emerging issues of sexual exploitation in Ireland, and beyond.

Chief Executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance Tanya Ward children in care and children with a disability are the “most vulnerable to sexual exploitation” by family members, people in the community and “criminal gangs”.

Speaking on the same programme, Ms Ward called said all the cases included in the study must be investigated by Tusla and gardaí.

“Someone needs to carry out a full investigation to understand the full extent of this and the prevalence of it, so we can break the cycle,” she added.

“It is telling me, if we have people that work with vulnerable children in the care system that don’t understand that this is a crime, we need a national response to it. We need a national policy from Government.”