The new law criminalising the recruitment of children by criminal gangs will not work if it is dependent on the testimony of groomed children, experts have said.
Workers in the fields of youth work and trafficking have raised concerns about the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023, also known as Fagin’s Law, goes through the Oireachtas.
The legislation proposes a five-year prison sentence for those who groom children into crime.
However, convictions under the new law rely on the child giving evidence against their groomer.
JP O’Sullivan, networks and communications manager of MECPATHS, which works with the hospitality industry to prevent child trafficking, said: “That is where it will become unstuck.”
If they have been groomed, they are hardly going to go against the person who groomed themselves for so long, especially as many will have been in familial situations.
"I don’t see how it is going to work.”
He also says the five-year sentence is “quite short”, adding: “Under the human trafficking legislation, the sentence for human trafficking in this country is life. Yet we are offering a five-year sentence to somebody who grooms a child for criminal exploitation.”
Last week, a meeting of Dublin City Council’s Joint Policing Committee was told that an eight-year-old child is being used to collect a drug debt from a family that has paid out a total of 30,000 so far.
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