I wonder is this a growing trend. I recently received a letter from the HSE stating that following comprehensive investigations over a period of just over six months, they could find no evidence that my client had been sexually abusing his daughter. I became involved with this client several years ago when I attended court on the first of very many occasions trying to enforce an access order. At the beginning of this year, completely out of the blue, the mother said that she was concerned about her daughter, who had a rash in the area of her groin. She brought her daughter to the GP and must have said something to the GP that raised the GP’s concerns and who not surprisingly in the current climate reported the matter to the HSE. The matter came before the court but the judge would not make an access order because he could not take any risks and wanted to wait until an investigation was complete. Six months later the investigation is complete and the conclusion is that there is no evidence of any abuse. In the meantime the infant child has lost all contact with her father and the risk we run now is that the mother will say that she does not want extended access to take place because the child misses her mother.
I know it is wrong to say that this happens very regularly or that there are even regular serious abuses of this nature but it certainly appears to me that it is happening more and more often. It’s a very easy thing to do. You bring your infant son or daughter to your GP and say you are concerned about this rash. You then set in train a nightmare child abuse scenario where nobody will take any risk just in case there is some truth in the allegations. If the mother is so filled with venom towards her former partner, she knows that she will then be able to get a six month period where her former partner will not have access to his son or daughter. Pretty effective tactic.
Kevin Brophy
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