The Minister for Health and Children has failed to provide appropriate facilities for disturbed children as already ordered by the High Court in 1995. On 10 March this year Mr. Justice Kelly directed that a 17 year old girl be detained in the Central Mental Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane. This happened despite an expert view that it was totally inappropriate and possibly illegal. Although considered to be of very serious risk to herself and others, the girl had no criminal record and was not insane. However, the judge had no option because of the State's failure to provide an appropriate facility or even a legislative framework to deal with such cases.
On 24 March a child was back in the High Court five years to the day when Mr. Justice Geoghegan declared that the State had a constitutional obligation to provide "as soon as reasonably practicable suitable arrangements for containment with treatment for troubled children". In a judgment in February, Mr. Justice Kelly said the State authorities could have been in no doubt about their obligations in this regard. He said it was clear that:
on no occasion has there been adherence to the timescale indicated to me. In each case the provision of the facilities has been deferred further and further.
In early March the case of a 15 year old girl who went out of control following the death of her mother was heard. After coming under the influence of truly evil people, as was stated in the case, she was said to have had 75 sexual partners while working as a prostitute, used her mobile telephone as a sex chat line, smoked 40 to 60 cigarettes per day and took drugs and alcohol. In spite of this she ended up in a State remand centre as there was nowhere else available.
Last month an extremely disturbed 14 year old girl with a propensity to epilepsy was ordered to be detained in the acute psychiatric unit of a general hospital. She took an overdose of alcohol and 20 ecstasy tablets and was allegedly raped after staying out late from a health board residential home. She was also diagnosed as having a sexually transmitted disease. An expert said she immediately needed a secure residential environment where she could receive appropriate therapy and treatment from suitably qualified staff, but the child's life was in imminent danger and there was no suitable alternative. Mr. Justice Kelly spoke of the appalling dilemma in which he was placed by the State and the failure of the Minister. He said "it manifests itself week in, week out".
Just four days before Christmas another 14 year old child, described by a psychiatrist as "the saddest child I have ever met", with an alcoholic mother and a violent father who allegedly sexually abused her, and who had tried to kill herself on Christmas Day 1998, was sent to a State detention centre by the High Court. This is an innocent child who, in the words of Mr. Justice Kelly, never had a chance. She spent her 14th Christmas in a reformatory.
Shortly before that a 16 year old boy with psychiatric and psychological difficulties but with no criminal conviction was sent to St. Patrick's institution, a prison, despite the view of the presiding judge that his continuing detention was unlawful and that the boy alleged he would be raped there. There would have been no surprise at this statement as in 1997 a 13 year old was warned by Judge Mary Martin that if she sent him there he would be locked up for 23 hours per day and would be raped every night.
It is inevitable that children treated in such fashion do not have a chance in life. Court observers have seen such children leave a court without a residential place. They often spot the same names four or five years later on bail applications. There is no doubt that the Minister and the State have totally failed. The Minister will claim credit for the construction of an inadequate building programme which would not have taken place without the stand of judges such as Mr. Justice Kelly and others.
