Of the tens of thousands of words in the six-volume Farrelly commission report, it would be easy to miss the short paragraph buried away in volume 4, under the heading: Grace’s attachment to her plastic keys and the question of punishment or discipline.
Amid the more than 2,000 pages of dense legalese, expository who-said-what-to-whom narrative and Beckettian obsession with process, it offers a rare and almost painfully fleeting glimpse of the humanity of the girl whose story has come to symbolise Ireland’s failings towards some of its most vulnerable citizens.
“When Grace came to live with Family X in February, 1989, aged ten, she came in the clothes she wore, holding a set of plastic play keys. Twenty years later, when Grace was moved ... into a residential placement at the age of 30, she was holding a similar set of keys. Over the intervening period, Grace was rarely parted from her plastic keys.”
Elsewhere in the chapter, a nephew of the X family says simply that her toy keys “were everything to her”. The nephew remembered how “she would take a little fit of laughing for no reason”.
“Grace” is the pseudonym given to a child with profound intellectual and physical disabilities who was placed in an unvetted foster home at 10 and remained there for 20 years, to all intents and purposes forgotten about by State services. No social worker saw her for six years. She stopped going to school. She only went to her day-care centre sporadically.
A commission of inquiry into what happened to her, the final report of which was published this week after eight years, found her teeth and personal hygiene were neglected and her finances mismanaged, but no evidence of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.
A valid criticism of the report – and indeed of the commission of inquiry generally – is that in its hyper-focus on the story of one individual, it fails to address bigger questions of how Ireland cares for citizens with intellectual disabilities. It would be fair to say that it doesn’t even satisfactorily reveal much of what happened to this one citizen on the State’s watch, despite the €13 million invested in doing just that. Or to put it more accurately, it doesn’t establish what happened to her under the State’s blind eye.
Marjorie Farrelly’s report – the senior counsel was the commission’s chair and sole member – collated 312,000 pages of documentation and heard evidence for 251 days, but apparently found few answers. I say “apparently” because with no executive summary, findings scattered throughout and a confusing pagination system, it is as oblique and unwieldy a document as I’ve ever encountered.
Her report notes that Grace was seen on occasion with bruising – including an incident in 2009 where she was noted by her day service provider and staff in the sexual assault unit at Waterford Regional Hospital to have three “suspicious” yellow bruises and scratching above her right breast and thigh – but not how it got there. It finds that she was left for six years without a visit from a social worker, but not why. It finds that a decision to remove Grace after an allegation of sexual abuse involving another resident at the home in 1996 was overturned, but not why, nor who made the decision.
The commission found there was neglect in the standard of care given to her, but “the evidence ... did not establish neglect ... in the provision of food and sustenance”. There was “no finding of any evidence of physical abuse, emotional abuse or sexual abuse”. And so on.
With regard to the 47 other children who passed through the X family home on respite or foster care arrangements, seven of whom subsequently made complaints, we are offered, again, only what we don’t know. “There is an absence of information in the possession of the commission identifying issues for further investigation.”
In a report replete with the unanswered, some omissions are particularly hard to understand. Given the very many outstanding questions about Grace – who is non-verbal and so was not called to give evidence herself – why was the decision taken not to pursue a further investigation involving other residents of the home? If the “evidence was not such to establish” Grace was abused, why in 2017 did the HSE settle with her for €6.3m “for her future care”?
Why was Norma Foley’s request that families be given advance notice of the publication of the report ignored? Why did so many witnesses find the commission’s approach to be adversarial?
And beyond the inquiry, why did HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster sound on Morning Ireland this week as though he sees his role as a passive recipient of information that falls into his lap, despite his acceptance that Grace was “wronged and harmed in many ways”? “That was never something that was reported to me or raised with me,” was a typical response. “That is not material information that was brought to my attention.”
In all the of the unknowns, unprovens and unfounds, we did at least get one clear answer. Announcing the establishment of the commission of inquiry in February 2016, then-taoiseach Enda Kenny posed the rhetorical question “was the system blind, was the system deaf?”.
The answer was yes then, and depressingly little has changed since. The system turned a blind eye towards that little girl with her plastic keys in 1989 when it sent her to stay in a home for a short period and forgot about her. Thirty years and millions of euro later it is still turning a blind eye – not just to Grace, but to the 47 children whose stories won’t be heard. And in doing so, it is choosing not to see any useful lessons there might be about how Ireland cares for its most vulnerable citizens.
