{"id":484356,"date":"2026-06-05T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/484356\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:23:12","slug":"kids-as-young-as-12-being-sexually-assaulted-by-other-kids-in-cork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/484356\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids as young as 12 being sexually assaulted by other kids in Cork"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Children as young as 12 years old are reporting sexual assault by peers while young male <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/maintopics\/lgbtq-_topic-5138489.html\">LGBT+<\/a> victims are slow to come forward to report sexual violence because of stigma, according to Cork\u2019s Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) at the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>The unit said some children are making disclosures that they have been raped by other children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Margo Noonan, nurse lead at the unit, told the  Irish Examiner that peer-on-peer sexual violence is typically targeted at females by males, but there are occasionally reports of incidents by males against other males.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She said there remains a stigma among young men from the LGBT+ community, which becomes more of an issue if they are victims of sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Noonan said: &#8220;The male population, especially in the LGBTQ community, is an extremely vulnerable population \u2014 particularly the younger men \u2014 from 14 upwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;A lot of young men who may have not come out and disclosed their sexuality and are experimenting, are very vulnerable because they end up with a stigma of being gay but they also have the stigma of a sexual assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">&#8220;And if it happened in an area known for LGBTQ+, straightaway they are asked what were they doing there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She also points out the fear of being found out means they are inadvertently protecting their abuser as they are reticent to come forward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Last month, the Alders Unit at the Children\u2019s Health Ireland Connolly Hospital revealed that the number of peer-on-peer sexual assault cases referred to it surged by almost 40% in just one year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Cork SATU will mark its 25th anniversary with a lunch at the Kingsley Hotel in Cork City on June 19. Among the keynote speakers will be Beyond Surviving founder and survivor Ciara Mangan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Children as young as 12 years old are reporting sexual assault by peers while young male LGBT+ victims&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11246,79,42,4829,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-484356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-childrens-health","tag-cork-news","tag-headlines","tag-lgbtq","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}