On Tuesday 7 June, 2022, Croatian-based organisation The Women’s Room (Ženska Soba), in collaboration with Rape Crisis Network Ireland, delivered a webinar on ‘Sexual Violence in War’. The Women’s Room is a Croatian feminist, non-profit, civil society organisation established in 2002. It provides direct services to victims of sexual violence including survivors of sexual violence as weapon of war. It aims for the prevention and combating of all sexual violence as well as promotion and protection of sexual rights.
Rape Crisis Network Ireland launched ‘Breaking the Silence: Terminology Guidelines for Data Collection on Sexual Violence against Children’ on Tuesday 22 February 2022. The event featured contributions from Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Inclusion and Youth Roderick O’Gorman, Biljana Brankovic, member of GREVIO, the independent expert body responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) and Niall Muldoon, Ombudsman for Children. Breaking the Silence is available to download on the Rape Crisis Network Ireland website here.
On Thursday 7 October Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) released its Annual Statistics 2020 report. RCNI represents seven Rape Crisis Centres around Ireland and collates annual statistics on who is accessing RCC helplines, appointments, and accompaniments, why they are using services, and what kinds of sexual abuse they have been subjected to. Download the report here.
Early intervention in children’s lives is the strongest commitment we can make to prevention and protection from sexual violence. Understanding the experience of adolescents is the first step to shaping interventions that work.
On Thursday 29 July Rape Crisis Network Ireland launched its new report ‘Storm and Stress: An Exploration of Sexual Harassment Amongst Adolescents’. This vital report fills a critical gap in our knowledge regarding adolescent experiences of sexual harassment, explores Irish adolescents’ understanding of sexual harassment within their peer communities and outlines the responses required to address it. The report was launched by Ombudsman for Children Dr Niall Muldoon and Dr Conor O’Mahony, Government Special Rapporteur on Child Protection in an online event that included a presentation by Dr Michelle Walsh, author of the report, and a panel discussion on how we, as a society, can disrupt the processes through which adolescents become the victims and perpetrators and repeat victims and perpetrators of sexual harassment. Download the report here
ISL: Bernadette Ferguson and Lisa Harvey
