Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Welcome back to the Committee, ladies. We have with us Nikella Holmes and Michelle Duffy, who are representing the Northern Ireland Survivor Council. I remind members to be succinct in their questions, and I invite our witnesses to brief the Committee.

Ms Michelle Duffy (Northern Ireland Survivor Council): Thank you for inviting us to speak to you. I am here as one of the co-founders of the Northern Ireland Survivor Council. I am also a lived-experience expert in multiple forms of abuse, including childhood sexual abuse. My background is in social work and trauma therapy.

I will start by saying something really simple: childhood sexual abuse may happen in childhood, but it does not stay there. Depending on the responsiveness of those around the child, childhood sexual abuse can shape a person's mental and physical health, relationships, parenting, education, employment and ability to participate fully in life. As many of us know, it can ripple right through families. Without the right interventions and support, trauma can be carried into the next generation. Therefore, this is not simply about what happens to a survivor afterwards; it is about what happens to families, communities and society when people do not get the opportunities and support that they need and deserve.

Our expert insight report shows us that the current system is not providing that opportunity consistently. Survivors have told us about long waiting lists, fragmented services, complex thresholds and short-term interventions, and many are reaching crisis point before they receive any support, if they receive support at all. When we do not invest in recovery, we do not remove the cost; we move it elsewhere. We then see it show up in health, education and the justice system, and we create a revolving door of repeated crisis intervention. When someone receives six to 12 sessions, probably after a really long wait — sometimes of four to five years — and are then discharged, we have to ask this question: are we actually saving money, or have we simply postponed the cost and placed it elsewhere? We are not saying that every survivor needs lifelong support. We are saying that recovery is not linear and that one size does not fit all. In our report, people highlight the fact that they may need support at different points in their life, and that that can vary between therapy and peer support. For many, it is about education on managing and understanding their trauma symptoms, or maybe just on navigating a system that is really hard to understand. They really want a system that has flexibility to respond to their reality.

There is another issue that I want the Committee to consider. In our report, survivors told us that they cannot always provide honest feedback to the organisations that provide their support. We must pay attention to that, because, if an organisation is someone's only source of support and that person criticises that support or gives honest feedback, the worry is that they may be left without it. Many survivors even said that they feel that they may be seen as ungrateful or that they have a duty to give back in some way. Those services undoubtedly provide really valuable support and many survivors could not survive without them, but we are not getting the whole picture if we take feedback only from organisations that are actually working with people, because those organisations only see people who come through their doors. Survivors can reach people who may never come through those doors, who do not engage or who stop asking for help because previous experiences have told them that it is not worth it. That is why independence matters and why I feel that we need an independent and diverse survivor council. That diversity is important. We cannot build a system around the survivor experiences that are easiest to hear, because, if we hear only the loudest and most visible voices, we risk designing services for the people who are already easiest to reach.

I want to be clear that survivor expertise should never replace professional expertise. We need both. Research tells us what the issue is, where the gaps are and how we can tackle that. Professionals understand practice and how systems operate, but survivors can tell us about the lived reality: what it feels like to navigate those systems; what works and does not work; and where people fall through the gaps. That combination can give government a much stronger basis for making decisions. Our message today, therefore, is not simply, "Give us more"; it is, "Use survivor expertise to help make better decisions about what we already have, where investment is needed and what needs to change". That does not mean another consultation in which survivors are asked for their views after decisions have been made. It is about involving survivors before those decisions are made. We want to help build a system that moves from crisis prevention and short-term thinking to long-term recovery, and that goes from designing services for survivors to designing them with us. That is not an additional cost; it is part of the solution. Thank you.

Ms Nikella Holmes (Northern Ireland Survivor Council): Thank you very much for having us today. As the Northern Ireland Survivor Council, we are members of the global Brave Movement, which believes strongly that we can end violence against children. We have consulted the experts: the adults who survived abuse as children. That is what the report is about. It is titled 'Nothing About Us Without Us' because things that concern survivors should not be done without them.

One of the things that the report speaks to is how violence can be ended. Survivors have talked about the need for education: knowledge about grooming and about how to handle disclosures in the family and community context. There is a lot there, but it is just a stepping stone — a starting point. We could do a lot more. On the day that we did the consultation — I am sure that Michelle would say the same — there was a solidarity among the participants in the room that I had never felt before. There were no barriers. There was no second thinking. People were just honest. They were able to share their experiences without sharing their trauma. It was a really productive session. People were able not only to share their perspectives but to discuss the solutions. So much more could be done on the basis of survivor-led action.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you very much again, ladies. We really appreciate your time.

We have all received the report. A few things struck me. I will start with you, Michelle. I appreciate that the sample size — 60 — is not large, but it is qualitative. The statistics that jump out at me are that 13% of respondents have had experience of the care system, and 29% identify as having a physical disability. Without wishing to sound patronising, perhaps the most vulnerable people and the people who have the most barriers in life are more susceptible to being groomed and becoming victims. In the research, did anything come out in respect of people in those two categories, for example?

Ms Duffy: As I said, the impact ripples through. When people do not get the support that they need and deserve, the impacts are seen in their physical and mental health. A lot of the survivors have developed disabilities and different health issues because of the trauma that they suffered. Before we started the full consultation, we put out an initial consultation to explore how we could engage those people and get them in the room, including as regards whether we needed interpreters and how to ensure accessibility. We did a couple of online sessions and telephone calls to make sure that we did not add barriers for those people, because not everybody can leave the house or access transport in the same way.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Earlier today, the Deputy Chair, the Clerk and I met a lady who works for an organisation that is trying to remove the stigma around domestic violence and to empower women to disclose and take back some agency. Given the number of victims across society — I am sure that many of us know victims even within our own families — why are we so bad at putting in place proper disclosure mechanisms whereby people are believed and get support readily? What came through in your research about how we could make that easier and less painful for people who have experienced abuse?

Ms Duffy: We found that people are not always comfortable having those conversations in schools or community centres. That was one of the most striking findings. A lot of the people said that, although there is education in schools about picking up on the signs of abuse, sexual abuse is still not really talked about. A lot of the men and women who came to see us said that —. Sorry, my brain is not working.

Ms Holmes: There was a conversation around language. We are putting the onus on children to tell us what happened to them, and they do not have the language, the understanding or the — I do not want to say "courage" because it is not up to them to have courage. All adults — not just the safeguarding leads in schools, churches or clubs, but everyone — need to be educated so that they can notice what has changed in the child and ask themselves, "Is there something different? Do I understand what grooming is? Is the fact that that person is such an upstanding member of the community the only reason why I think that they could not possibly have done this?". There is a lack of understanding. How do we educate everyone on the street to help a child to disclose? Amanda, who is part of the group, talks about sitting on the principal's desk in the morning and swinging her legs. That would have been the perfect opportunity to disclose to him what was happening to her, but he did not have the understanding or the knowledge, and she did not have the language, and she was never able to disclose. It is a society-wide taboo that we need to tackle. We need to educate people in the same way that education on domestic violence has started, whereby we all feel more responsibility to point out domestic violence. We need the same education when it comes to childhood sexual abuse.

Ms Duffy: A couple of the survivors came up with the really good idea of putting posters in toilets. When you are in a toilet, you do not have to stop in order to look at a poster. It is about being specific: using the words "sexual abuse" or "sexual violence", and specifying who people can talk to. There could be posters about some of the more subtle signs of grooming. It can be done using child-friendly language. There is often a fear that we should not teach our children about those things, but the reality is that children are experiencing it, and they do not have the option to look away. We need to educate children.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): There is a lot of work to do in this regard for the Executive Office but also the Department of Health. Your report mentions first responders, for example. What sort of traction are you getting from either Department on your report and its recommendations?

Ms Holmes: Not much, to be honest.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK.

Ms Holmes: We have spoken to the Department of Justice a little bit as well. The bottom line is that perpetrators fall under the umbrella of the Department of Justice and victims do not really fit anywhere. Victims might fit a little bit into Health and a little bit into Justice, but no one has a specific remit. The issue of victims crosses every Department: Education, Communities, Health and Justice. We are driving the Northern Ireland Survivor Council because we want the voices of those victims to be heard everywhere that they are affected. To tackle the issue and stop the daily news reports about it, we need to be heard in every area. Survivors are more than able to speak for themselves; we are more than happy to be here and do it with our big mouths. We need the support when we say, "This is what we need".

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you.

Mr Dickson: Thank you, both, for coming along today. You have been doing important work. In your report, you suggest the establishment of a government-funded survivor council. Do you have a particular model in mind? Are there good examples of that in other parts of the UK or around the world that could guide us?

Ms Duffy: The Northern Ireland Survivor Council is part of the global Brave Movement, which has drawn up guidelines for setting up councils. We sent those guidelines to different Departments a year or two ago. Nothing is set in stone, however, because every country is different and it has to work for every country. We understand the restrictions around funding and all those things. It is about coming together initially to have meetings to see what will work for victims and survivors here. A survivor council could be set up solely around childhood sexual abuse, but it could be much wider. It is about trying to gather those voices. At the moment, organisations in different places hear those voices, and it is all very disjointed. If you had one organisation that victims and survivors trust — because we are them — you could gather all those voices and feed them back. There are good examples. Germany has a model, which is backed in law by the German Government. There is one in Australia, and France is looking at having one. I will be having a meeting with the Home Office and the NSPCC next week to talk about establishing one in the UK.

Mr Dickson: If that sort of organisation were established, how would its independence be guaranteed?

Ms Duffy: That is why we are not recruiting anybody else. We believe that there needs to be a formal recruitment process. People would need to have had a certain level of healing and recovery to enable them to do the work. We want people from different backgrounds, across genders, cultures and disability. We need to represent all survivors, including young people. That would create the independence.

Ms Holmes: We are under the umbrella of the Brave Movement, which supports councils globally and has experience in policy. There must be supervision. It would be really important for us to have someone to go to within a safe structure.

Mr Dickson: Nikella, you said that much of this centres on violence against children. What is the nature of that violence? How does it start? Does it start with smacking or with direct sexual abuse? How can that be identified? In a sense, that takes us back to how you produce child-understandable pictures and posters, so that they can identify something that is wrong and identify the safe person or people they can speak to.

Ms Holmes: Our focus is on sexual violence, but, a lot of the time —.

Mr Dickson: It starts before that.

Ms Holmes: All of the above comes into it: the emotional and the physical. There are a lot of resources out there on how to speak to children, and we just need the confidence to go out and grab them. I have a four-year-old girl at home, and I got character-type books for her. They are very friendly and bright, but they are all about your body and what you are comfortable with. Those conversations are easy to have once we step out and notice the need for them. Knowledge is a weapon, and we need to equip our young people with that knowledge.

Mr Dickson: Lots of people are scared to have that conversation or just do not know how to have it. You propose making it easier to have that conversation as part of growing up.

Ms Holmes: That makes sense. We have done it in dribs and drabs. I do not know whether any of you watch 'EastEnders', but, quite a while ago, there was a story about Whitney and her stepdad. That story resulted in me telling my dad what was happening to me. That was on TV, but it brought a conversation out of the dark and gave words to something. The media is really powerful: it can bring the conversation out into the open. The more that we have that and the more that we talk about it, the less scared we will be.

Mr Dickson: Thank you very much.

Ms Sugden: Thank you, both. The work that you do is incredibly difficult but incredibly important. I will pick up on what Stewart said about education. Do you find that some people are resistant to that education because of the nature of the topic? Are people, particularly those from a faith-based perspective, resistant to having conversations about sexual abuse because of the nature of the topic?

Ms Duffy: Yes, absolutely. A lot of scare-mongering goes on: "If we teach our children this, we're going to expose them to something that we don't want to expose them to". However, as I said, the reality is that our children are being exposed to it. As survivors, we want to be of use in those situations. We, as survivors, want to go in and have conversations with the people who are a wee bit scared or frightened about having those conversations or about what that education looks like. We want to be able to tell them why we are having the conversations in order to try to demystify it a wee bit. I had a conversation around White Ribbon's Listen, Lead and Learn workshops. It is about listening — what are your concerns? — educating on it and trying to teach new ways.

Ms Sugden: Absolutely. Age-appropriate education on this issue should be statutory in our schools, because, as you said, we expose children to that education on the basis that it will support them.

My other point is around trauma. I am an advocate for addressing trauma and trying to understand it. I get particularly frustrated by the fact that, in our post-conflict society in Northern Ireland, we have never really addressed trauma. I am interested in the clinical pathway. I understand that the pathway for people who are suffering from trauma is usually cognitive counselling as opposed to the sympathetic counselling of the past. I was diagnosed with PTSD last year. I went through my own form of trauma counselling, and what I received was so important. You said it: in order to receive the additional support, you need, first, to be able to receive it, and you cannot receive it if your body is physically rejecting it. Will you talk a little bit more about that and about what more we need to do, even from a Health perspective, although I appreciate that this is the Executive Office Committee? That type of therapy is quite cheap to provide. It is not medication; it is thinking, breath work and all of that.

Ms Duffy: I am probably not the right one to ask about the cognitive behavioural stuff, but I agree with you: trauma lives in the body —.

Ms Sugden: The physical body.

Ms Duffy: — and comes out in the body. While that cognitive behavioural stuff can help some people, what we are actually doing there, because it is short term, is putting a tiny plaster on a big, gaping wound. That wound will keep leaking until, eventually, there is a big eruption. Survivors need choice around how they heal and how they engage with services. Not everybody wants to go to therapy, and that is OK. We need to get better at looking at what it is that people actually want and need, and not try to fit people into services or restraints. Does that make sense?

Ms Sugden: Yes.

Ms Sugden: What is your experience of mental health support for children? I heard something really concerning from a community group recently: that, in order to access child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), children now need to be self-harming; they need to be at the point of severe crisis. I followed that up with the Health Minister, and he said that that is not the case. However, I think that, in practice, it is the case. What is the experience of the children with whom you work?

Ms Duffy: There is very, very little for children. I worked with the NSPCC for a number of years on its Letting the Future In programme. I work with children and young people privately, and I do some pro bono work for children and young people. There is one service, and it only works with children aged eight and over. The thresholds are high, so a lot of children cannot access the service, and the waiting lists are long. I feel strongly that we cannot provide support just to the child; when a child has been sexually abused, we need to support the safe adults around them. When a child has a therapy session, they are only there for one hour; they are in their families and schools for the rest of the week.

I am finding that a lot of families are reaching out to me in absolute desperation because they cannot get the help and support that they need. CAMHS is on its knees because we are creating a revolving door. That is the problem. People are being provided with sessions only in the very short term, and those people keep coming back, so the waiting lists never get shorter.

Ms Sugden: I am really angry about that. That is shameful. I suggest that the Committee write to the Minister of Health about the experience on the ground. We cannot make a commitment to support victims of childhood sexual abuse and then not provide the support in order to do that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): No problem. A note has been made of that.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you for coming to the Committee. You said in your opening remarks, Michelle, that, at times, the counselling services offered are not appropriate, because they are not based on survivor experience. Can you expand on that? I am not asking you to name organisations. If you want, we can go into closed session to do so, but, for me, that is the nub of the problem.

Moreover, on the last point, waiting lists for children, adults and even older people who have experienced trauma are massive. There are services in certain communities but not all, and I imagine that they are not survivor-led services but come purely from those with a clinical background. Can you also expand on that? I am genuinely trying to get to the bottom of where gaps could be filled quite easily, if people were open to that.

Ms Duffy: To be honest, the way in which funding structures are set up creates competition —

Ms Ní Chuilín: It does.

Ms Duffy: — among services, and a lot of the organisations providing services go with the type of funding that they receive. Some may have started out providing a certain type of support and then got funding that was available at that time that meant that they started going down a certain road and thus lost —.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Services are therefore driven by funding rather than being needs-led.

Ms Duffy: Yes. I will not mention specific organisations, but I know for a fact that some are using something called a CORE-10, which is a basic measurement tool for distress. A CORE-10 is used for very basic levels of anxiety. If an organisation is working with people with trauma and who have experienced sexual abuse is measuring those coming in using a CORE-10 and then saying, "Sorry, you don't meet the threshold", we are doing them an injustice. We are therefore feeding into that same shame that people already hold that they are too damaged and broken and that not even a specialist organisation can help them. It is not good enough.

As a survivor myself, during COVID, a lot of my trauma symptoms came back, and I really struggled and thus reached out for help. I was told that if I did not take medication, which I did not, I was refusing treatment. I waited four years before I got any support. I pay for therapy myself, but many people cannot afford it.

Ms Ní Chuilín: No, they cannot.

Ms Duffy: Organisations constantly direct people to WAVE Trauma Centre, but it works only within certain parameters. It does not deal with sexual trauma. People are sent to the trauma centre and, again, are being told that their childhood trauma does not meet the centre's criteria. Again, the message that that sends out is that they are too damaged.

That happens a lot when people go to services that offer six to 12 model sessions. They are being told, "We cannot open you up, because we have only a certain number of sessions available". I understand why they cannot, because to do that is very dangerous, so, yet again, they are feeding into the shame that people already hold that they are too damaged.

Ms Ní Chuilín: That is what I thought was happening. WAVE and the Regional Trauma Network do a good job, but they do so within certain parameters. As well as writing to the Minister of Health, we need to write to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister to ask what discussions are taking place.

I have lots of other questions, but I will focus on this one. Given your expertise as survivors, do you feel that enough progress is being made on child sexual abuse through the work of this Committee or the Department? What contact, if any, do you have with TEO officials? You need to be honest and use us. There are Sinn Féin and DUP representatives on the Committee, but we are not cheerleaders for anyone. We are here to scrutinise the Department.

Ms Duffy: There has not been very much progress made. Two years ago, I reached out to the Executive Office. I think that we had one meeting with the junior Ministers, but, every time, there is pushback on meeting us.

Ms Holmes: I have a little more experience, having worked with TEO officials on clerical sex abuse research through the Northern Ireland Survivor Council. It is better than it used to be, but progress is slow. People are starting to recognise that the reason that we are here is because we have lived-experience expertise and want to use it. We are not here for any other reason. People are starting to realise that, but progress is slow.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I am not making any excuses, but the process for the Inquiry (Mother and Baby Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Workhouses) and Redress Scheme Bill was huge. In my experience, the officials who looked after that legislation were excellent. I hope that you receive the same level of support and contact from officials, because all the survivors of those institutions acknowledged their contact with those officials.

We are trying to find out where you are at and where the gaps are so that we can help fill them and then find out how we can work with the Department to make sure that your experience is seen as expertise. I am not saying that this is the case, but sometimes, when there are survivors who are not sexual assault counsellors for victims, the service is almost viewed as being less than. The role of any survivor needs to be central to moving forward. I will leave it there.

Ms Duffy: There is a fear as well about engaging with victims and survivors. We are these wee vulnerable women or men who are very angry, who do not understand and who make all these demands. We are actually very reasonable people, and we do understand. We want to have open conversations and come up with solutions. We know that there are restrictions and problems, but we want to able to sit down and talk.

Ms Ní Chuilín: You are not made of delft. What you are really saying is, "Talk to us".

Ms Holmes: There is more chance of our offending you than the other way around. [Laughter.]

Ms Ennis: Thanks, Michelle and Nikella. This is a hugely important issue. Unfortunately, it is prevalent but under-reported, and the challenge for us is to reverse and change that position.

I will raise two issues, one of which has been touched on by a few members. We still do not have proper relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in school settings. It is patchy. Some children are getting better access to RSE than others. Kids probably do not realise until they are adults what happened to them. They do not understand, because they are not told that it is wrong. They do not understand sex, appropriateness and healthy relationships. For me, for lots of reasons but particularly for this conversation, it is about having RSE standardised and stopping it being taboo. For some reason, talking about sex education seems to be taboo. We need to have RSE in schools so that children can understand what a healthy relationship is, understand their own bodies and understand where it is appropriate for someone to touch them and where it is not.

I would guess that that is your assessment as well. If they had better access to RSE, children's ability to vocalise what happened to them would increase, and you would then get more coming forward to report such crimes.

Ms Holmes: Yes. A big thing that came through from survivors was that how their disclosure went determined how their healing went. If their disclosure experience was good, their healing experience was better.

There are two issues with disclosure. One is how people react, while the other is what language and knowledge the child has to disclose with. If they do not have that language and knowledge, disclosure will never happen, which means that their healing journey will take longer. It will be rougher, and there will be more issues. It is therefore a no-brainer. We need to have something that is child-friendly, that is specific and that gives them the language to use. Again, there was a story on the day that we held the consultation event about a child telling someone about their abuse, but the words that they had used meant other things — they were not the words for the actual bodily parts — so they were not taken seriously. It was a disclosure that no one understood was a disclosure. It is as simple as that sometimes. That abuse could have been stopped there, but it went on for years after that, because no one picked up on it.

We talk about what happened in this country, decades and decades ago, because sex was even more of a taboo subject back then. People did not understand how pregnancy happened and how relationships happened, and their lives therefore took a completely different course. When are we going to learn that sex needs to be an open topic for discussion? Knowledge is power, so in order that they can protect themselves best, people need to have that knowledge.

Ms Ennis: In some ways, it is still seen as shameful to talk about sex. It is still taboo, unfortunately. People's not being able to realise that what has happened to them is abuse really compounds the problem with reporting.

On safeguarding in faith settings, to what extent are faith-based organisations still trying to handle allegations of sexual abuse in-house? First, that is wrong. Secondly, victims have to be at the centre, because when organisations, especially faith organisations, presume to know better and try to handle allegations in-house, when those are about serious crimes that need a justice response, victims end up being re-traumatised. They have been through everything in a faith-based setting only, ultimately, to have to go through it all again in a criminal justice setting. Those are two big undertakings for victims who just want recourse: to be believed, to put the experience behind them and to start healing. To what extent are you therefore aware that the message still has not got through to faith-based organisations that safeguarding and reporting needs to be up to scratch? To what extent are you aware that they are still trying to handle allegations in-house?

Ms Holmes: The answer to that is twofold. One, it is extensively still happening. Two, we do not know the extent of it, because there is still no independent scrutiny. One thing that I am working on with TEO officials is on how we can look at safeguarding in the Churches, based on the clerical sex abuse research. Churches are kind of in the voluntary sector. If they are registered with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, they have to have their policies and procedures in place. After that, no one looks or checks. If the Churches are lucky enough to have someone with some knowledge and are committed to using that knowledge, great, because those policies and procedures may then be kept up to date. If they are not, however, who knows? We do not know what is happening when reports are made. We do not know what happens after concerns are raised. Are people still being told, "Well, they didn't mean that. You have to forgive them, because that is what God tells you to do"? We just do not know.

I really hope that we, together with TEO, can get something off the ground to help churches understand the importance of doing that and, to return to the conversation about grooming, to help the Churches understand that sexual abuse can happen so that everyone takes responsibility for keeping children safe and understands that predators utilise faith-based settings to abuse people and that they groom the entire community. That is still a journey to go on. I am not in a position that I feel safe enough to take my child into a church. Perhaps that answers your question. I hope that that will change in the future. In the short term, however, there will not be a legislative change that will allow us to police safeguarding in faith-based settings.

Mr Gaston: Thank you very much for coming along to the Committee. It is always very powerful when victims come and present their evidence to Committee. I thank you, Nikella, for the work that you do outside of this subject and on spiritual abuse. You have engaged with me on a number of occasions and, indeed, on clerical abuse.

I will pick up on the methodology for the pre-consultation. I am very aware that the evidence that you have given to the Committee is contained in our pack, but people watching the session online will not have that. One of the things that has struck me is the age of the respondents. Yes, these are the early stages, but it gives me a flavour of the people who want to take part in the consultation. I am struck by the number of 25- to 34-year-olds who have come forward. They are people born between 1992 and 2001, yet they make up 23% of the people who have shown a willingness to take part in the work that you are doing. If I extend that to 35- to 44-year-olds, covering people born between 1982 and 1991, which is still quite recent in the grand scheme of things, those two age groups alone make up 44% of the people coming forward. That is stark and very telling. In the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of these scandals were starting to enter the public domain. My presumption was that, when there is a public focus on such abuse, instances of it would go down, whereas it seems to be that it did not, and, as a result, more and more people are coming forward to tell their story.

I mentioned earlier that Fiona Ryan, who recently stepped down from her role as Commissioner for Survivors of Institutional Childhood Abuse, was a keen driver of the need for a prevalence survey in Northern Ireland to determine the full extent of childhood sexual abuse and the settings in which it occurred. From the research that you have done, based on the people with whom you have engaged, what do you think the prevalence survey will show? Yes, that may be a small number of people, but I believe that the number is reflective and quantifiable enough to signal to us what a prevalence survey in Northern Ireland might reveal.

Ms Holmes: That is a great point. It is one of the things behind our point that we really need a funded Northern Ireland Survivor Council. We all have full-time jobs. We are taking time out of those jobs to do this work. I would love to take it and make it 10 times bigger. I would love to be in the Braid in Ballymena and in the town hall in Newry doing the exact same thing for survivors at outreach events in order to make it easier for them. Such events might be for people who are older who do not want to engage online or via email, and they would perhaps get more men involved. Organisations that want to do that have reached out to us. I am not confident enough to say that our research would be completely representative of the rest of the population of survivors. I think that those age groups are more engaged and more ready to tell their story earlier. There are a lot of older people who perhaps did not get the encouragement or have that ability to get there. I would love to see our work being done on a much bigger scale.

The prevalence survey really needs to be built around the choice of survivors and their safety. We did that on a small scale. For survivors of abuse, if we were able to wave a magic wand and get the full picture, all ages could be completely looked at, including people who are younger than those age groups. There are children who are being abused now. That is just the reality. I think that it is happening across all communities, and I genuinely believe that there are a lot more male victims out there than have been identified. It would be interesting to see, but I think that there needs to be something that is truly trauma-informed.

Mr Gaston: I note that, owing to limits on your budget and space at the venue, 50 spaces were available for the consultation event and that those disappeared over a weekend or four days. That shows us the number of people who wanted to attend. A number of people who registered an interest did not attend in person. Is that because of stigma or because they were not ready to tell their story? What insight do you have into that? I imagine that you followed up with the people who registered but did not attend to see why they did not attend. I am really interested to know why people said on the Friday or over the weekend that they wanted to attend the event but, when it came to it, felt that they could not.

Ms Duffy: Do you know what was interesting on the day? There was an issue with the trains, and, as a result, a few people messaged us to say that they could not get into Belfast. On top of that, we recognise that coming into such spaces is very scary. We put out lots of stuff. For example, we provided really good information on self-care that went into what the space would and would not be like. People did not have to give their names. They could use pseudonyms. There was no photography or anything. We gave people tools to deal with what might come up. We told them that it was OK for them to register and then change their mind, as we could offer them other ways in which to engage. Sometimes, however, people really want to engage but, when it gets to the day itself, doing so feels too big for them. As I said, there were also transport issues that got in the way that day.

Ms Holmes: I had parked my car on Great Victoria Street, and all the traffic lights were out. I thought, "Oh no!".

The other thing to say is that such an event had never been done before. If we were to do it again, we could go back and see what participants said about it. I told them that they could take pictures of me — I am sure that those were great — but there are pictures of what the room looked like and how it was set up. We could ask people for their comments about it, whereas we could not have done that previously. To be honest, anxiety is also involved. Although the participants were excellent, and everyone signed up several times throughout the day to the confidentiality arrangements, it was about whether they could trust that that was the case. They will trust the process now, but I am not sure that they would have done so without first having that experience, and that is understandable.

Ms Duffy: We had to turn around the event in a very short time. The funding came in during January. Did we hold the event a month later?

Ms Holmes: It was at the end of February.

Ms Duffy: We therefore had a very short time in which to turn it around. If we had longer to do it, that would give us an opportunity to go out, meet people, let them get a sense of whom we are and build that trust, whereas everything happened very fast.

Mr Gaston: You made two particular statements in your introduction. One was about ending violence against children, which, for me, is the headline to take away from today. That is what must happen. The second was about honest feedback not always being provided, which was most concerning and has already been touched on. If somebody feels that they cannot give honest feedback to an organisation, that organisation cannot improve, and people will lose their faith in engagement. I do not want you to give any names, as Carál said, but how big a problem is that? Can you help with it? I do not want to get you to say something that you potentially regret, but I want to revisit that point, as it relates to organisations' capacity building. If someone were to come forward to you with a concern, could you act as an intermediary and pass it on?

Ms Holmes: I believe so. Michelle and I already do some work with some Catholic churches to do with survivors who want to come forward but do not want to deal with the Catholic Church directly. There could be a range of reasons for that. It could be that they are looking for an apology or want to meet other victims — whatever it may be — but they may not have the emotional capacity to deal with the Catholic Church directly. That is what we are doing.

Dealing with organisations on a bigger scale is what the Northern Ireland Survivor Council does. If survivors do not want to do something publicly, we are more than happy to take what they say and be that link for them.

Mr Gaston: I read some of the testimonies, which were very striking, personal and hard-hitting. That brings me on to clerical abuse and the calls for a statutory inquiry into it. That has been talked about for years. What is your key message to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister about issues such as clerical abuse and wider abuse? What message would you want to leave with them, if you were to have the opportunity to meet them personally? Representatives of another victims' advocacy group talked to us about "perfect ghosting". To me, that is not good enough. You have an opportunity now — this session is being televised, and I am sure that some of their scribes are watching — so what is your key message for them?

Ms Duffy: Ultimately, abuse thrives on silence and on people looking away. If we continue to look away and not face the issue head-on, it will continue, and we will therefore not come up with any solutions. Survivors are here to support government and organisations. We cannot bring the issue of abuse to an end without speaking to the people who have lived and breathed the reality. As I said before, we can have the research and the professional opinions, but if we are missing that important piece, we cannot complete the jigsaw. We therefore ask the First Minister and the deputy First Minister to engage with us and not to continue to ignore the issue. I do not know whether you want to add anything, Nikella.

Ms Holmes: Just exactly that. It is similar to what I said previously on clerical abuse. We have the tools to fix it. It is time to get to work. We have shown up in time for work, so where do we go? That is my message to them. We are here, we are willing and we are equipped, so let us work.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you, ladies, for coming along. I am not sure whether you heard this before you came into the room, but we are getting a briefing from the Executive Office on the reports on historical clerical child abuse. As you said, this is not just about abuse in clerical settings and faith-based settings. Rather, it is about abuse right across the board. We will all be more cognisant of that when we meet the Executive Office. I agree that there is no point in your having an in-depth, insightful report if you are not getting the response that you need from the various Departments. That is something for the Committee to take on board. We will see what we can do to support you to advance your work.

Ms Holmes: Thank you. I will leave some shiny hard copies here for you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I appreciate that, and thanks again. Keep in touch with the Committee, as you always do. We appreciate your insight.

Ms Duffy: Thank you.