A statutory commission of investigation should be carried out into convicted sex offender and former hospital consultant Michael Shine, an independent report has recommended.<\/p>\n
Shine worked in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda<\/a> from 1964 until 1995. In March that year the chief executive of the hospital was informed of a complaint of abuse against Shine by the North Eastern Health Board. <\/p>\n Shine took leave while the complaint was addressed and subsequently retired in October that year. By the time of his retirement, he was already the subject of multiple allegations of sexual abuse, going back as far as the 1970s.<\/p>\n He was convicted in 2017 of sexual offences and in 2019 convicted of assaulting seven boys between 1971 and 1992. He served three years in prison.<\/p>\n Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> announced a scoping exercise into the scandal earlier this year following a meeting in November with the Co Louth-based charity Dignity4Patients, which supports more than 400 survivors.<\/p>\n Senior counsel Lorcan Staines began work in March as the independent facilitator to conduct the scoping exercise within a time frame of 16 weeks.<\/p>\n In his final report, published on Thursday, Staines said while his role was not to make findings of fact, several \u201ccommon themes\u201d emerged from the accounts he received from the almost 75 survivors to whom he spoke.<\/p>\n He said allegations of abuse reported to him involved a broad range of ages and were reported to have occurred in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, in Shine\u2019s private practice in Fair Street, Drogheda, and in his own home.<\/p>\n Staines described the impact of the alleged abuse on these men, reporting many of them as being \u201cself-deprecating\u201d and \u201cunderplaying the seriousness of what had happened to them\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe damage done to these men was palpable, even following the passage of time. It was also clear that the harm had not been borne by them alone but had often radiated outward to their families and to those who cared for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Staines added that nearly all of the survivors who spoke to him \u201cwere of the view that Michael Shine\u2019s conduct was a matter of public knowledge at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMany referred to local warnings, local comments, and the phrase that \u2018the dogs on the street\u2019 knew what was happening,\u201d the report added.<\/p>\n In his conclusion, Staines said the concerns and issues raised by the victims and survivors \u201chave not been sufficiently considered and addressed in previous reviews\u201d.<\/p>\n He recommended that a six-phase commission of investigation should be established and that these phases should run concurrently and start immediately.<\/p>\n \u201cThe approach is designed to avoid an inefficient and lengthy process and to provide a workable form of State response to the issues raised.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Court refuses to release transcripts from trials of sex offender Michael ShineOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n According to the report, phase one should be an independent, document-based examination of the history of criminal complaints made to garda\u00ed, the office of Director of Public Prosecutions<\/a>, and of the decisions made on whether or not to prosecute.<\/p>\n