A LIMERICK abuse survivor is demanding answers from the Minister for Justice on why the man who abused her was placed in a nursing home with elderly, vulnerable people after his release and why she was not informed of his death for five months.
Sonya Stokes told the Dáil Joint Committee on Justice on Tuesday that she was living in dread of her abuser, Joseph Hogan.
Ms Stokes, who had to also accept the release last year of Joseph Hogan, who had repeatedly raped her as a child, told the Limerick Post she only learned through her own enquiries two weeks ago that he had died on December 5 last year.
She told the Limerick Post: “I suffered huge anxiety on his release. I ended up in the hospital emergency department just before Christmas and anxiety played a huge role in that.”
“If I had known, I could have celebrated Christmas knowing that that dirty monster could never again abuse any child or woman.”
Ms Stokes is also demanding information on what safety measures were put in place after Hogan was transferred to a nursing home.
“He was placed in a home with vulnerable people. He was a convicted sex offender. Was there anything put in place to protect those other residents? Would anyone like it if their elderly mother was living in the same home as a convicted rapist? The system has let me down by not keeping me informed and it didn’t consider the safety of the innocent people in the nursing home”.
Sonya, along with other members of the Victim’s Voices group – Shaneda Rooney from Shannon and Leona O’Callaghan from Limerick – were addressing the Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs, and Migration, which was conducting a detailed scrutiny of the Private Members’ Bill, the Victims of Sexual Violence Civil Protection Orders Bill 2025.
The Leinster House session was also addressed by Rape Crisis and Women’s Aid representatives.
The purpose of Committee scrutiny is to assess the Bill from a policy, legal, and financial perspective with a view to recommending whether the Bill should proceed to Committee stage or not.
The Victims of Sexual Violence Civil Protection Orders Bill 2025 seeks to address an important gap in the protection available to survivors of sexual violence following the release of offenders from custody.
This Bill provides that at the same time as someone is convicted of a crime of sexual violence, a court could impose an order restraining the person convicted of the offence from approaching the victim.
In her statement to the committee, Ms Stokes said: “The impact (of the abuse) did not end when the abuse stopped.It did not end when the court case finished. It did not end when the system said it was over. For me — it never ended.”
She added “the fear of bumping into my abuser was constant”.
“It is something I carried everywhere I went … There is no real freedom after abuse — not when the person who harmed you can walk freely in the same communities, the same streets, and the same spaces. While perpetrators move on with their lives, survivors do not get that same chance.”
In her address to the committee, survivor Leona O’Callaghan said: “This bill is centered on safety. We cannot talk about safety without talking about the brutality of fear.”
“The memory of his eyes staring at me as he raped me in a dark graveyard freezes my nervous system in a way I hope none of ye ever experience and no child is built to cope with. Only by understanding that level of fear can you understand my need to feel safe from him now.
“Beyond the abuse, I had to survive a criminal justice process that requires you to relive it all. Moments I had spent years trying to forget I had to repeatedly relive.
“I was an extremely unwell mum for those years with suicide attempts and hospitalisations when it all proved too much. The hardest part was the night before his sentencing.
“I had to look my 10-year-old son in the eyes and burden his little shoulders and his little world with the darkness of the rape of his mother, before he read it in the papers. That was the biggest cost of my decision to prosecute.
“I share this to give you a small insight into the price survivors in Ireland already pay. I am asking you to recognise that we have done enough by the end of a trial. Please, let that be enough.
“Without a protection order, I dread the day he is released. This man’s eyes alone can bring me to my knees. Even in high security, he couldn’t be controlled, committing further violent crimes in prison. Yet I, the woman responsible for taking 17 years of his freedom, am meant to feel safe from revenge when he is released soon.
“We survivors came forward to get monsters like him off the streets and protect innocent children. those are your children, your nieces, and your grandchildren. We don’t ask for thanks; we ask to feel safe after we put ourselves front row in their firing line by coming forward.
“I want to look a survivor in the eye and tell them the process is hard, but is fair and safe, this bill brings me a step closer to that.”