A young Dublin woman described yesterday how she was taunted and spat at and people rushed to wash their hands after making contact with her because her father had AIDS.
Ms Karen Stephens (20) waived her right to anonymity to tell the haemophilia infection tribunal of the effect on her life of her father's diagnosis. She was the first witness to give evidence to the tribunal set up to inquire into how over 260 people with haemophilia in the State became infected with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood products. Her father was one of those infected.
The father of a boy who died of AIDS in 1994 also gave evidence. He recalled the difficulties he had finding a school for his son once headmasters became aware he was HIV positive. Mr Raymond Kelly, from Shankill, Co Dublin, was also critical of the attitude of at least one senior doctor who treated his son. He described Prof Ian Temperley, director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre from 1971 to 1995, as arrogant and dismissive.
Ms Stephens said her father died in 1993, just before her 13th birthday. She never had a childhood. Parents of children attending her school told their children not to touch her and if they did they ran to wash their hands. "People called me names and spat at me," she said.
Breaking into tears, she said the last few years had been horrible. "There isn't a night that I don't think of him and cry. It seems so senseless," she added.
Mr Kelly said he was sacrificing his anonymity for the sake of his son, John, who died aged 13. "John would have wanted me to do it. I had to come here. I want answers to questions," he said.
"I know what I think happened. He was infected by products brought into this country from America. I want to know who brought them in, who made the decisions and if they knew they were contaminated or possibly contaminated, which I think they did. If they did then they murdered my son."
Mr Kelly's son suffered from haemophilia and was given a contaminated clotting agent in 1984. A year later he was diagnosed HIV positive, but John never knew this.
He said Prof Temperley openly discussed his son's condition in front of other patients waiting to be seen at Harcourt Street Hospital. In January 1994, when John had liver jaundice, Prof Temperley gave him medication for TB. Prof Temperley told him he was not sure if his son had TB but he would give him the medication anyway. Asked about side-effects, he said: "It will be bad for his liver but sure his liver is shattered anyway."
A doctor who gave a second opinion claimed the boy did not have TB.
Describing the difficulty he encountered in finding a school for his son, he said the headmaster at the first school he approached said he would have to tell all teachers in the school that John was HIV positive.
A similar stance was adopted by an upmarket private school where the principal said all teachers and their wives would have to be told. Mr Kelly returned and enrolled John in the first school and he was very happy there.
Mr Brian McGovern SC, for Prof Temperley, said his client would say he did the best he could for John and others based on the knowledge and resources available at the time.