I’LL KEEP FIGHTING
» Mick demands report on allegations published » Ambulance board ‘to review document first’
ABUSE survivor Mick Finnegan has vowed to continue his protest until a report into historical child sexual abuse allegations at St John Ambulance Ireland is published.
Tomorrow will mark the 15th consecutive day the Dubliner has camped outside the SJAI headquarters in Leeson St – and he said he’ll stay there for “as long as it takes”.
The report was submitted to the SJAI board last November following an extensive review by child protection expert Dr Geoffrey Shannon SC.
But despite promising in December it would be published in early 2023, SJAI has yet to release the findings.
Even the report’s author Dr Shannon has backed survivors and repeated his call for the report to be published as recently as Friday. He contacted Mick, 39, and told him: “I know this is an incredibly difficult time for you and the other survivors.
“I have emailed the chairman of the board each time you have contacted me indicating in very stark terms the impact that delay is having on you and the other survivors.
“I have emailed the chairman again today and will update you on any response I receive.”
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SUNDAY 19.02.2023
Mick reported allegations of sexual abuse against a volunteer within the paramedic organisation to gardai and SJAI more than 20 years ago.
The DPP decided not to prosecute but his alleged abuser, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was airbrushed out of an SJAI centenary booklet in 2003.
In 2011, the then commissioner of SJAI Patrick Plunkett apologised to Mick and said he had been “aware there was some concern” about the former member.
In 2019, a Tusla probe deemed the allegations against the former male volunteer, who is now in his 80s and living in Dublin, to be founded.
Mick told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I’m standing out here in all weathers, but the upsetting bit is being outside a building where it all happened. Every time I come down here it is traumatising. I break down crying. Most days leaving here I sit down at the canal and have a cry.
“I joined St John Ambulance as a child, and over a number of years I was groomed, sexually abused and raped. There are other survivors here with me.
“They are traumatised, they’re struggling because they took part in this review and nothing is happening.”
Dr Shannon was asked to examine how the organisation handled past complaints of child sexual abuse and to assess current child safeguarding standards.
In a letter sent to Mick on 10 January 2023 and headed “Dear Victim-survivor”, SJAI wrote: “We fully appreciate that you and many others are understandably very eager to
However long it takes, I’m going nowhere MICK FINNEGAN ON DAY 13 OF PROTEST
review the findings of this report. As such, we want to give you our commitment that it is our intention to publish the full report immediate after the relevant review by the Board has taken place.
“This process, which is necessary for the Board to undertake, is already under way and please be assured that the Board is committed to ensuring it is as quick and efficient as possible.”
But Mick queried why it was taking so long to review the report. He said: “I don’t have any confidence in that report being published. We need action now.
“The board only meet once every two months. It will be 12 weeks now that they have this report. You have to ask yourself what the delay is.
“I’m not going anywhere until the report is published. However long it takes, I’m going nowhere.”
Last November members of the Seanad called for a full public inquiry into St John Ambulance urging Dr Shannon’s report be published as a matter of urgency. Senator Lynn
Boylan pointed out that at 14 years of age, Mick Finnegan reported the abuse to his family, SJAI and the gardai. She said: “Coming forward takes huge courage, but unfortunately for Mick, no one wanted to know… no one cared...”
In January this year, President Michael D Higgins also supported calls for the report’s publication.
Senator Mary Seery Kearney raised the issue in the Seanad on Thursday of this week paying tribute to Mick Finnegan for “standing firm in the face of absolute intransigence”. She said: “It is really quite appalling that we still don’t have that report however many months on. I again call on them to publish the report, there is no excuse for it [delay].” In the past three weeks two more survivors of alleged sexual abuse at SJAI have made criminal complaints against a named individual to An Garda Siochana. The
Garda National Protective Services Bureau is now investigating complaints from several survivors who allege sexual assault and rape against the ex volunteer.
A spokesman for SJAI said it intended to publish the full report “immediately after the relevant review” by the board.
In the meantime Mick says he and other survivors are standing firm and gaining a swell of public support.
During this interview, drivers honk their horns in solidarity and one passerby tell him: “It is unfair and unjust what they are doing to you.” Mick said: “The reason I’m outside this building is to highlight what happened.
“If a child went to an organisation today and was treated the way I was treated, I couldn’t live with myself.
“I want to be safe in the knowledge that if a child comes forward they are listened to.
“It’s about safeguarding children.”