Children, those under the age of 18 years, were the confirmed or suspected perpetrators in almost 20 per cent of all sexual crimes reported to the Garda last year, according to the Irish Times.

Newly-released figures also show 83 per cent of the complainants of the total number of sexual crimes reported to the Garda in 2019, were alleging they had been sexually abused when they were children.

81.1% of victims of sexual violence recorded in 2019 were females, while 18.9% were males. In addition, 98 per cent of the perpetrators in sexual offences are male, according to the new set of crime data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Some of the information released on Friday relates to 2019 and some to 2018.

Of the sex crimes that were reported to the Garda in 2019, 62 per cent of the offences had occurred within a one-year period before they were reported.

24 per cent occurred 10 years or more before the victims went to the Garda.

A hospital has secured interim High Court orders allowing it not to resuscitate a brain-injured woman, aged in her 50s, with “a litany of conditions” and a “very poor” prognosis.

The woman is tube-fed, non-ambulant, sleeps some 22 hours daily and is doubly incontinent.

David Leahy BL said it was an application to permit clinicians not to ventilate or resuscitate the woman should she suffer cardiac arrest as they considered that would further deteriorate her already very compromised position, was not in her best interests and would not alter her prognosis.

The hospital’s treatment plan involved what was “likely to be end of life care” with ward-based management, conventional oxygen therapy and no ICU admission or CPR, he outlined.

The woman’s family had expressed opposition to that plan and had argued she should be resuscitated if required but there was a more recent indication their position may alter and they had sought more information on the hospital’s proposals, he said.

The Government should prioritise the legalisation of surrogacy in this country so couples who have struggled to have a baby no longer need to travel abroad to access the service, a leading international campaigner on surrogacy has said.

Sam Everingham, founder of the Growing Families charity, says the legal uncertainty around surrogacy in Ireland should be “urgently addressed” and called for legislation to be introduced.

His comments follow reports that dozens of babies born to surrogate mothers in the Ukraine were being cared for by nurses in hotels and hospitals because the individuals and couples who commissioned them cannot enter the country to collect them due to Covid-19 border restrictions.

The call comes as Irish families due to travel to Ukraine in the coming days for the birth of their child via surrogacy are unable to secure permission to enter because of the covid19 lockdown.

The practice of foreigners using the Ukraine as an international surrogacy destination as come under fire as 51 babies born to surrogate mothers lay uncollected due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions. Clients from all over the world including the United States, China, Britain, Sweden and Ireland commission women in the Ukraine to carry pregnancies for them, often using eggs harvested from other Ukrainian women.

Now, however, they find themselves unable to travel to the country and so the babies they commissioned remain unclaimed.

A fertility company, BioTexCom, is maintaining care of the newborns at a location in Kiev called the Hotel Venice which is surrounded by a high fence with barbed wire. The building is usually where parents stay while picking up their babies. At BioTexCom, a surrogate mother receives about $15,000-$17,000 (€13,600-€15,400).

The company released footage of the babies to spur the Government into easing restrictions on the prospective parents. It had the opposite effect however.

Lyudmyla Denisova, the human rights ombudsman for the Ukrainian parliament, said the video showed the country had a “massive and systemic” surrogacy industry where babies were advertised as a “high quality product”.

She suggested looking into changing the law to allow only Ukrainian parents to use such services.

Separately, the Ukraine’s Catholic Bishops called the practice a trampling of human dignity and urged the Ukrainian authorities “to condemn and ban this shameful phenomenon”.

“In recent days, we have witnessed a video posted on the BioTexCom clinic page from the Venice Hotel in Kyiv, which shows an improvised children’s room and 46 crying babies, deprived of maternal touch, parental warmth, selfless care, much-needed love, but are seen as a purchased product for which the buyer did not come. Such a demonstration of contempt for the human person and his dignity is unacceptable,” they wrote.

The Constitutional Court of Bulgaria is conducting a review of a new Social Services Act amid claims that the legislation’s provisions could marginalize the role of parents and allow unjustified and disproportionate interventions by the state in family life.

Some of these provisions are similar to laws in Norway, which have been widely criticized for eroding parental rights. Norway’s actions have resulted in a number of cases at the European Court of Human Rights.

The legal advocacy organization, ADF International, submitted a friend of the court brief highlighting the strong protections which exist in international law for parental rights.

Lidia Rieder, Legal Officer for ADF and one of the authors of the brief said that Bulgaria must ensure any new law respects the rights of parents. “Children deserve the loving care and protection of their parents. International law is clear that parents have the responsibility for raising children. The state should not interfere with those relationships unless there is clear evidence of a real risk of serious harm”.

Leo Varadkar described the meeting as a good initial discussion “on how to resume Mass and sacraments safely over the course of the summer”.

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Archbishop Kieran O’Reilly who are respectively President, Vice President and Secretary of the Irish Episcopal Conference, represented the hierarchy.

In a press release, after the meeting, they said the purpose was “to share thoughts on the reopening of places of worship over the course of the summer”.

“The Church shared information on the work that is being done at all levels to develop a national Church plan for the safe reopening and emphasised it will play its part in applying public health measures to ensure the health and safety of its congregation”.

The US Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments for and against extending the Civil Rights Act’s “ministerial exception” to religion teachers at Catholic schools.

The exception protects the right of churches and religious ministries to select and terminate ministers without government interference.

The case at hand would decide whether religion teachers at two Catholic schools could be considered religious ministers.

In 2012, the Supreme Court had decided unanimously in the case Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC that a Lutheran church school firing a teacher, who taught the full curriculum including religion, was exempt from the Civil Rights Act because the teacher was considered a religious minister.

At Monday’s oral arguments, Supreme Court justices questioned just how broad the ministerial exception was, and whether it could be argued to extend past religion teachers at religious schools to include science teachers or coaches at religious schools who lead the students in prayer.

Faith leaders from Dublin gathered online yesterday at noon for a special Covid19 prayer service.

The group included the Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and Church of Ireland Archbishop Michael Jackson as well as members of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Bahá’í and Zen Buddhist communities.

The service was a response to an appeal made Pope Francis. Speaking earlier this month, the Pope announced that “[He had] accepted the proposal of the ‘Higher Committee for Human Fraternity’ for believers of all religions to unite spiritually this 14th May for a day of prayer, fasting, and works of charity, to implore God to help humanity overcome the coronavirus pandemic”.

The “Higher Committee for Human Fraternity” was established at a Conference held in February 2019 on the occasion of the visit Pope Francis and His Eminence Dr Ahmad At-Tayyeb, Grand Imam of Al Azhar Al Sharif to the United Arab Emirates to discuss the promotion of human fraternity and world peace.

The Dublin service was coordinated by Mr Adrian Cristea of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum.

Ending the widespread stay-at-home orders under the coronavirus pandemic would align with Catholic social teaching and respond to the needs of vulnerable people, including the young and the poor, two Catholic economists said.

Government regulations generally are developed “with the interests and lifestyles of the upper class in mind,” while poor people “do not have a seat at the regulatory table, said Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, during an online event on May 5th organized by the Lumen Christi Institute at the university.

The economic costs of such regulatory actions to poor people “are getting neglected and the benefits, to the extent there are benefits, are going to a very different group,” said Mulligan, former chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The EU should do more to protect the fundamental right to religious freedom across the globe.

That’s according to an open letter from international religious freedom experts.

The letter urges Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, to continue the mandate of the Special Envoy for the promotion of religion or belief outside the EU, a role created by the former Commission in 2016. Participants of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable signed the letter requesting the extension of the position. The letter also highlights the increasing attacks on freedom of religion or belief all over the world.

“Nobody should be persecuted because of their faith”, said Kelsey Zorzi, Director of Advocacy for Global Religious Freedom at ADF International.

“The role of the Special Envoy for the promotion of religion or belief outside the EU has been vital in standing up for those who are unable to freely practice their faith. In a time when freedom of religion is specifically threatened and violated, roles such as this one must be strengthened and not cancelled. Through the Special Envoy, the EU can lead international efforts in protecting those persecuted for their faith and continue being a leading voice on universal human rights”.