THE GARDA investigation into Tom Humphries has thrown the issue of the safety of youngsters playing sport into the spotlight. The HSE has 26,000 self-confessed peadophiles on its books, none of these peadophiles have ever been prosecuted and can pass Garda vetting to work with your children. Only a handful of the thousands of child abusers identified in the Murphy, Ryan and Ferns Reports have been convicted before the courts and so they can work with your children without legal restriction. Over 80% of foreign nationals cannot be vetted as their country of origin does not have a national crime data base. New research shows that those who have concealed the rape and sexual abuse of children are raping children by proxy and will at some point in thier life rape or abuse children.
Sporting bodies across Ireland have been very proactive over the last five years in ensuring that strict guidelines are in place to protect kids, however, on an almost daily basis people like Tom Humphries has unrestricted access to vulnerable children.
Every club has a dedicated child protection officer whose job is to investigate any complaint involving an underage child. The specially trained officials must undergo at least a day's training each year to keep up to date with HSE child protection guidelines.
When a complaint is made the child protection officer launches a preliminary investigation and may bring in gardai without informing the club.
St Vincent's GAA club, where Tom Humphries has coached various underage camogie teams, has one of the best reputations of any club in the country for having a top class child safety policy in place.
According to the GAA's own policy on child safety: "Each club has to adopt procedures that facilitate the privacy and safety of all young people in the Club and that such procedures are maintained and regularly reviewed."
It is mandatory that all managers and other volunteers who have contact with children are vetted by the gardai to ensure that they do not have any convictions for child sexual abuse or crimes related to children.
Even when they are given the all-clear from gardai, coaches and other volunteers are never allowed to be by themselves with children and two adults have to be present at all times.
If a second adult is not available then a minimum of two children must be with the manager or volunteer at all times.
Managers should never contact underage players solely on the youngster's own mobile phones and instead must inform parents or legal guardians of any training times, travel arrangements or match updates etc.
However, the nature of garda vetting means that it is possible that sexual deviants could slip through the net if they have never been convicted of child sex abuse.
