CHILDREN AS YOUNG as five were referred to the state’s agency for troubling sexualised behaviour last year, amid another rise in the number of children and teenagers being referred to the service.

The National Inter Agency Prevention Programme (NIAPP) was established by Tusla in August 2016 and last year it helped 105 young people – the first time the annual figure breached 100, and a 16% increase in the number of children seen in 2024.

The service works with children up to the age of 18 who have exhibited harmful sexual behaviour to others, including exhibitionism, tech-assisted abuse, problematic use of pornography and abuse through direct physical contact.

It also deals with psychosexual issues that arise from access to child sexual abuse images, as well as supporting parents and caregivers.

Judy McCarthy, the principal social worker with Tusla who supports young people and families in NIAPP services, told The Journal that while technology does play a role in troubling behaviour for some young people, it is not universal.

“For some children, there’s no technology,” she said. “For some young people, that is a part of it.”

McCarthy said that in some cases it can be that the issue has emerged “when gardaí [are] getting warrants to search devices, finding that they [the young person] have been downloading child abuse material.

“So that’s the other cohort of young people that can come to our attention.”

Pornography a factor

Tusla said there are waiting lists in each of the different NIAPP service locations, although these vary in length depending on the volume of cases and resources in each area.

The south-east currently does not have a local NIAPP service, although McCarthy said she was “in discussions” about addressing that gap.

Tusla said international research indicated that many young people and children accessing such services have seen pornography, but McCarthy said while it was an issue, it was not the only reason people might come to the attention of NIAPP.

“The young people I meet who were exposed to pornography at a very young age, … it was often in some sort of online group where images were shared, and they often describe being very shocked, being quite stressed sometimes, maybe not having talked to somebody about it, or not having someone to talk to about it.

“Again, if I look at research around what are the chances of encountering something like that if you’re online, it seems to be pretty high.

“And there are certainly children of a very young age who are exposed to any kind of explicit sexual content without a way to understand and make sense of that, concerned about [it] and the vulnerability – the vulnerabilities to being exploited, as well.”

“Generation gap”

McCarthy said the “biggest generation gap” is between children now and their parents.

As for how parents might approach access to technology for their children, McCarthy said: “Having the technology and having privacy with the technology are not the same thing. So it’s like, ‘yes, you may have this [e.g., a phone], but what you don’t have is privacy’. You don’t have that at a very young age.”

NIAPP is a voluntary service and McCarthy said of those attending it: “Where we see more concerns about being online is [among] young people who are very socially isolated, who maybe don’t have a friend group as well, and their entire social outlet is online.

“If you look at very young children and just think of their age and stage of development and what they find funny, the kids who are at the age where they think farting jokes and whoopee cushions are funny. If they’re online and looking for stuff that’s aligned with their age and stage of development, you can see where that might go.”

McCarthy said part of her motivation for speaking about the work of NIAPP was that parents, who may have discovered their child has been accessing pornography or even child abuse material, need help but can’t discuss the issue with anyone in their typical social circles.

I can’t tell you how many parents feel like they are the only family, how many young people feel like they are the only one.

“These are very young children with a whole life ahead of them. The recidivism rates are low. They’re lower with help.

“I would say this is a behaviour, not an identity. So it’s really important to hold that in the context of everything else.”

As for whether young people actually create child abuse material, she said: “I would say nearly never.”

Engagement with NIAPP typically takes between 18 months and two years and McCarthy said that more resources would help more people to be seen.

Emer O’Neill, the chief executive of Children At Risk in Ireland (CARI), said CARI’s own data indicated there were “three key themes – online porn, online grooming, and conversations of a sexual nature between peers and siblings – that could be influenced by online pornography.”