{"id":11801,"date":"2025-03-04T17:30:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T17:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/?p=11801"},"modified":"2025-03-04T17:42:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T17:42:16","slug":"government-must-immediately-prevent-abusers-from-exploiting-laws-to-access-victims-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/ga\/government-must-immediately-prevent-abusers-from-exploiting-laws-to-access-victims-details\/","title":{"rendered":"Government must immediately prevent abusers from exploiting laws to access victims&#8217; details"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is unacceptable that legislative loopholes are allowing abusers to retraumatise their victims, according to Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking on the claims by Sonas Housing, Deputy Gannon, the party\u2019s Justice spokesperson, said:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s a gross miscarriage of justice that perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence can access details on the whereabouts of their victims from state bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cTusla and the Data Protection Commission, the bodies which, in turn, released and requested information about victims to and on behalf of their abuser should only exist to prevent harm, not perpetuate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe DPC should have no role in pressuring domestic violence charities like Sonas to release information about those they are sheltering &#8211; it\u2019s obscene that that assertion even needs to be made.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMy thoughts are with the victims, who have been forced to move from the refuge they were staying in due to concerns for their safety.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cStaff in domestic violence charities are also at risk &#8211; Sonas believe the name of one of their support workers was revealed to the perpetrator by Tusla.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere are six other cases in which abusers are actively seeking information on their victims from Tusla or the DPC.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThese victims must not be retraumatised by state bodies who are mandated to protect them.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOur justice system often works against survivors of gender-based violence &#8211; the government must move quickly to change legislative loopholes like these, as well as ensuring survivors\u2019 counselling notes are not routinely used as evidence in sex offence trials.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDomestic, sexual and gender-based violence are endemic in Ireland. One in four women in this country are affected by domestic violence in their lifetime, while half of all women report experiencing sexual violence at some point.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cSo much more needs to be invested in prevention, protection, legislative reform, and policy co-ordination to truly transform Ireland into a country where there is zero tolerance of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">March 4th, 2025<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is unacceptable that legislative loopholes are allowing abusers to retraumatise their victims, according to Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon. Speaking on the claims by Sonas Housing, Deputy Gannon, the party\u2019s Justice spokesperson, said: \u201cIt\u2019s a gross miscarriage of justice that perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence can access details on the whereabouts of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,316,7,557,548],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-gary-gannon","category-press-release","category-sexual-abuse","category-violence-against-women"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Government must immediately prevent abusers from exploiting laws to access victims&#039; details - Social Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/government-must-immediately-prevent-abusers-from-exploiting-laws-to-access-victims-details\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"ga_IE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Government must immediately prevent abusers from exploiting laws to access victims&#039; details - Social Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is unacceptable that legislative loopholes are allowing abusers to retraumatise their victims, according to Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon. 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