Homeless charities are warning that women are being raped in plain sight on the streets of Cork.
Caitriona Twomey of the Cork Penny Dinners charity said the rapes have been happening for the last number of years – and have increased during lockdown.
She is calling on the Government to do more to protect the most vulnerable people in society.
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, she said she was speaking out because volunteers can no longer handle the ‘despair in people’s eyes’ when they are unable to help them.
“Seeing the women – and men as well but mostly women – and seeing their faces, seeing the pain in their eyes, just seeing all of that, we were sick to our stomachs and we wanted to do something about it,” she said.
“It is a very raw, hard thing looking at the women. They just stand there; they just accept it because they have no other way of dealing with it. There is no place for them to go.
“These women were being raped – and some of the men as well – and they had no place to go, no-one to turn to; they just curl up in a ball on the street where it happened.”
“A scream wouldn’t help"
She said people have been raped multiple times in a week and, in some cases, even in one night.
“They actually have no place to go at all and this is the thing I want to get across,” she said, “And during lockdown, things were more difficult for them, because there was nobody there.
“A scream wouldn’t help them because nobody would hear them.”
Protection
Ms Twomey said a lot of women get into relationships with older men so they will be protected from others.
“A lot of women will pick a partner maybe to have someone to be with and not have a load of them at her,” she said.
“We see young girls with older men and it is just for protection to keep them safe on the streets. It is better to be with one of them than to be at the hands of few.
“It is not just a tough world out there for them it is just downright emotionally and physically hard for them and that is for men and women, boys and girls. They are on our streets and they are hurting big time and we have to protect them.”
Fear
Mary Crilly from the Sexual Violence Centre in Cork said vulnerable women are viewed as “fair game” by a minority of men.
She said many of the women on the streets do not bring forward any charges due to fear of the court process.
“They won’t go that far because they’ll say, what is the point?” she said.
“That is the huge sadness about it. That something so horrific is happening to a human being in our society and they turn around and say what is the point? I won’t get justice; I won’t be believed; I am not worth it anyway; it doesn’t matter.”
She said society as whole needs to look at the vulnerability of homeless women and find new ways to support them.
You can listen back to the full segment here:
