Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 18 Apr 2000

Vol. 518 No. 3

Adjournment Debate. - Prison Suicide.

Mr. Neville

I wish to share time with Deputy Joe Higgins.

I thank the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform for being present. There is an urgent need for a detailed examination of why there is such a high level of death by suicide in our prisons. There must be a comprehensive review of how the mentally ill are treated in the prison service. Ireland has the second lowest crime rate in Europe but the highest prison suicide rate. Six prisoners suffered death by suicide last year.

I raise the issue of the death by suicide in the care of the State in Wheatfield Prison last Friday of Anthony Cawley who had a sad and difficult life and who caused severe damage and extreme hurt to the victims of his crimes. He was a very damaged man, damaged while incarcerated in the institutions selected by the State to deal with him. He died while in a State institution. These institutions robbed him of his childhood, left him vulnerable to sexual assault by the State's employees and left him to rot at the age of seven. He was repeatedly raped in Trudder House which in its time, as reported recently by Anne Marie Hourihan in the Sunday Tribune, is thought to have employed a total of five paedophiles. This raises the question of who exactly Trudder House was for. I call on the Minister to publish details of the Eastern Health Board's investigations into the horrible abuse inflicted there.

It was obvious to the social services that the prisoner had a serious psychiatric disorder and needed long-term care. Mr. Justice Kevin O'Higgins described his probation officer's report on his background as one of the most harrowing he had ever read. The response of the State was to place him in a cell and check him every 15 minutes as he was at high risk of suicide. This approach is totally unacceptable. This view is shared by Dr. Charles Smith of the Central Mental Hospital. Clearly, 14 minutes and 50 seconds of non-observation is not a good way of preventing suicide in the case of those who are determined. The only way is to maintain eye to eye contact in a hospital ward setting.

We do not have an adequate psychiatric service for those who are mentally disturbed in our prisons. The Minister's best effort is to provide the equivalent of two full-time psychiatrists for more than 2,600 prisoners. A report published last month by the European CPT commission recommended that in-patient psychiatric services for prisoners be reorganised as a matter of urgency. Fr. Feargal McDonagh, head of prison chaplains, stated that if a prisoner is lucky he will see a psychiatrist for five minutes. That is stretching it. The main function of the psychiatric system is dispensing and prescribing medication, sleeping tablets and anti-depressants. Counselling is non-existent. This is not acceptable. Prisoners identified as disturbed or at risk of suicide are meant to be sent to the Central Mental Hospital. As there is a shortage of beds, prisoners are held in a padded cell, stripped to their underwear with a plastic mattress on the floor and a blanket designed in such a way that it cannot be torn and used as a ligature. They are left to eat their meals off the floor.

I sympathise with the family of Anthony Cawley, the prison governor, staff and prisoners as any suicide is extremely traumatic for the prison.

Mr. Higgins

(Dublin West): I thank Deputy Neville for sharing his time with me.

Anthony Cawley grew into a sad, damaged and dangerous human being because of the effect of circumstances which brutalised his childhood and adolescence to an intolerable degree and included criminal negligence by caring institutions which were supposed to help vulnerable children. Can any person say with absolute certainty, "If I was subjected to such an ordeal I would not have become a criminal?"

The governor of Wheatfield Prison stated that Anthony Cawley had told him as late as one hour before his death that he was extremely upset about a radio advertisement being run flagging an article in Ireland on Sunday about the alleged most dangerous men in Ireland which would name Cawley. This was on top of the lurid headlines of other tabloids describing this man as a beast and evil incarnate. In whose interest were these articles? In the interest of the innocent woman who suffered appallingly from the violence inflicted by Anthony Cawley? No way. I have no doubt that such articles cause a terrible revisitation of grief and anguish for victims and their families. Were the articles in the interest of the rehabilitation of Anthony Cawley, that from a damaged man he might have become a whole human being, or in the interest of prison staff and the social services which tried to create conditions for his recovery? No way. Such articles are simply about filthy lucre, selling newspapers to make profits and pay the editors and others fat cheques to lead privileged lives. The article in question made a mockery of the newspaper's sanctimonious campaign of a few months previously in which it took on a magazine which was carrying advertisements for activities in which vulnerable women were being put in danger by pimps and others.

This country has rejected the death penalty for extremely serious crimes. This means that we must look to a situation where people who properly pay severe penalties in terms of imprisonment for their crimes, if released, can play a role in society in a way that is non-threatening to anybody else. This means that the tabloids should lay off and provide space to allow this to happen. Will the Minister outline his thinking on the matter, on possible legislation under which space would be provided for the caring and prison services to lead offenders back to society after they have paid their debt, and on the banning of such lurid articles and their advertisement on radio?

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

I express my deep concern at any loss of life in the prisons and particularly death by suicide. Every such death is a tragedy, not just for the family, relatives and friends of the deceased but also for the prison service. I also take the opportunity to extend my sincere sympathy to the family of the deceased, Anthony Cawley. I am aware that these sentiments have also been conveyed to the family by the governor of Wheatfield Place of Detention.

Anthony Cawley had served his sentence in various institutions. He was transferred to Wheatfield in September 1997 and moved to the segregation unit in October of that year for his protection from other prisoners. He had a long history of self-harm and threatened suicide on a number of occasions. He was under special observation as a result. In view of his special circumstances the governor saw him daily in the segregation unit.

At 10.50 a.m. on Friday, 14 April the Governor visited Anthony Cawley in his cell and discussed a number of issues with him. The Governor again called to see him that afternoon at 3.35 p.m. While he appeared to be in good spirits, he complained about a planned Sunday newspaper article concerning his case. I will return to this point. A little over one hour later at 4.45 p.m. he was found hanging from the window of his cell. He had tied a ligature made from the laces of his shoes around his neck and attached it to a latch on the window. He was cut down immediately. A medical orderly was in the vicinity and com menced CPR and an ambulance was called. The fire brigade ambulance arrived at 5 p.m. and resuscitation commenced. The ambulance left for Tallaght Hospital at 5.30 p.m. He was pronounced dead at 6.02 p.m. in Tallaght Hospital.

In accordance with normal practice the Garda Síochána was informed and its inquiry began immediately. As is usual, this death will be the subject of a public inquiry in the form of a coroner's inquest. The circumstances of the death will also be examined by the suicide awareness group in Wheatfield Place of Detention. I am satisfied that in the circumstances nothing more could have been done to prevent this tragic loss of life. The prison service made ceaseless and unheralded efforts over many years to sustain and assist him. His troubled life has been starkly described in recent days with the focus aimed at his childhood and offences. Beyond this public perception lay a deeply damaged person with special needs which many prison service officials from the highest levels down to the prison officers on the floor tried valiantly to address, no one more so than the present governor of Wheatfield Place of Detention. The reality facing the governor each day was a socially isolated and publicly demonised person with little to live for.

One claim recently made in the media was that Anthony Cawley was denied entry to the intensive group treatment programme for sex offenders at Arbour Hill Prison. I have to refute this. He was assessed by the expert team which runs the programme but was found unsuited to the group process which the programme entails. He was, however, afforded, exceptional access to other therapeutic services in view of his special needs.

The preventive measures currently in place to deter suicides are kept under continuous review. The circumstances of each death in custody are examined by the suicide awareness group in each prison. The examinations carried out by these groups cover the background and circumstances of each death. Their objective is to identify, where possible, measures which might be taken in the future to contribute to the prevention of tragic deaths of this nature. This is an important mechanism for absorbing the lessons to be learned in each case.

There are also procedures in place for identifying and monitoring offenders at special risk. Such offenders are usually placed under special observation. However, we cannot escape the fact that where an offender is determined to take his or her life the scope for prevention is limited. Suicide is not a completely preventable act in a free society or in a prison system which accords any respect to the personal dignity and privacy of prisoners.

There is one aspect of the tragic death of Anthony Cawley I want to address this evening. While nobody would wish to pretend that the offences he committed during his short lifetime were anything other than grave, it is also right to remind ourselves that he too had been seriously victimised, not just in his adult years but when he was a small child and long before the age when he or any other child could comprehend what was meant by a criminal offence, let alone commit one. The young Anthony Cawley, not surprisingly, reacted to the ill treatment experienced in his tender years and later because, like the older Anthony Cawley, he shared one thing in common with all of us – he was a human being.

It is outrageous that in the tortured days and hours leading up to his decision to end his life he had to cope with being widely described in some media reports, not in terms that we would claim to be the basic right of every human being, but as "the beast". How can any fair minded person take seriously the outpourings of some of our more outspoken journalists about the rights of minorities or their admonitions to those of us who try to vindicate and balance competing rights when they apparently see no cause to rail or whimper against their employers and colleagues who saw a seriously damaged and imprisoned human being, at the bottom of the pile and at the end of his tether, being savagely described as "the beast"?

My Department has been advised by prison staff that media advertising about promised media pieces in which Anthony Cawley was described as "the beast" had caused him considerable distress in the days before he died. It is too late now for those who printed the headlines calling Anthony Cawley a beast to tell him they are sorry. However, I am sure every right thinking person in this House and outside it will agree that respect for basic human rights requires that we do not regard the revulsion that may be felt about the crimes committed by any human being, however deep and understandable that revulsion may be, as a permit for describing him or her in language which is appropriate not to a human being but to an animal.

Anthony Cawley's family deserve an apology from those who described him in bestial terms. The good name of Irish journalism needs to be rescued by one of its number from the depths to which it descended on this occasion.