Weekend staff shortage at local sexual assault unit highlighted

The regional Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) in Mullingar has seen a reduction of three doctors in its first year of operation leaving weekend cover "not adequate". When SATU first opened in February 2009, there were eight doctors and one CNS (Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner) available for roster duty. Now there are currently five doctors and one CNS available for duty. Initially, there were 12 assisting nurses available, now there are 11. This reduction in staff has led to only four of these doctors providing weekend cover, which is "not adequate" according to the unit's first annual report by the HSE. The staff shortage also resulted in a limited availability of appointments for patients returning for STI (sexually transmitted infection) screening to 90 minutes a week. "Due to the embargo on recruitment it has been difficult to recruit additional staff for the SATU and on call cover at weekends is being provided by four forensic examiners only," said the report. Another problem highlighted by the report was the temporary location of the SATU within Mullingar Regional Hospital, operating from the urodynamics room, a location "not discrete within the hospital" and without adjacent toilet and shower facilites. The temporary location also prevented full service during office hours. A new permanent location for SATU has been identified within the hospital, however there is no fixed date for the move yet. In all, 50 patients attended the SATU in 2009 and of these 46 were female. Just six victims said that they had not reported the incident to the Gardaí. Of the fifty patients, 24 of these said that they had drank more than 10 units of alcohol. Five patients said that they could not remember if a sexual assault had taken place due to memory loss and four admitted that they had used drugs as well as alcohol prior to the attack. The figures also reveal that forty per cent of those treated already knew the assailant with just 12 per cent reporting that their attacker was a stranger. Ten per cent of patients said that they had been attacked by a long term partner. In 35 of the cases the patient said that they were attacked by just one person and multiple assailants were noted in three files. The largest numbers of cases reported were from people aged between 26 and 35 (18 cases) and 11 patients were aged between 14 and 18, of these just one was male. Surprisingly most attacks occurred during the day (58 per cent) and 42 per cent of attacks occurred between the hours of 8pm and 8am. This was the first annual report compiled for the Midland's SATU which covers Westmeath, Longford, Offaly and Laois.