The families of more than 40 intellectually disabled people who suffered prolonged sexual abuse in HSE facilities in Co Donegal have not been interviewed as part of the latest review of failures in the case, The Irish Times has learned.
The whistleblower who raised the alarm about the so-called “Brandon” case also said he was not spoken to for the report, which Department of Children and Disability sources expect to be published “shortly”.
The case initially centred on at least 108 incidents of sexual abuse perpetrated against upwards of 18 people, many of whom were non-verbal, by another intellectually disabled resident, given the pseudonym Brandon, at two facilities in Stranorlar, Co Donegal, between 2003 and 2016.
The exclusion of victims’ families from the latest process was described as “very disappointing” by former minister of state Anne Rabbitte, who commissioned the report, and a “disaster” by one affected family.
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Coming in the wake of the widely criticised Farrelly Commission report on the “Grace” case, the failure to include victims’ families in the Brandon review called into question, Ms Rabbitte said, commitments by HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster last week to “absolute openness to looking outwards as an organisation”.
Ms Rabbitte said she had asked that families be included as “the only non-institutional moral compass” who could speak for their non-verbal loved ones.
The whistleblower, who brought his concerns to former Donegal TD Thomas Pringle in 2016 following repeated efforts to have them adequately addressed by the HSE, said he expected the report to be “another whitewash”.
Ms Rabbitte had hoped the forthcoming report could encompass as much as possible of the still-unpublished 2021 report by the National Independent Review Panel (NIRP) on the case. Only an 11-page executive summary of the 67-page report by the NIRP, known as the Brandon report, was published.
It found the abuse occurred with “the full knowledge” of staff and management of Seán O’Hare Unit in St Joseph’s Hospital and later at the Ard Gréine Court complex. The HSE facilities had been run with a “disregard for residents’ rights”, allowing sexual abuse to continue “unabated”, the NIRP said.
None of the victims’ families were told until December 2018, more than a decade after the abuse in some cases.
In 2022, another examination of HSE-files identified 10 more perpetrators who sexually abused 42 residents of the now-closed Seán O’Hare unit between 1991 and 2002.
Among the NIRP’s recommendations was that a “strategic working group” be established to develop “a new vision for disability services” in the northwest region.
Ms Rabbitte, who argued unsuccessfully for the Brandon report to be published in full, last year sought a “high-level report” from the working group on the safeguarding structures and processes in place in disability services in the region.
She said there were “about 20 families” affected by Brandon’s actions, of whom she had met five who wanted to speak about their concerns. Others had not wanted, or were afraid, to engage with any review, she said.
The five families remain in contact with the whistleblower, who said none had been contacted by the working group. The sister-in-law of a now deceased intellectually disabled man who was sexually assaulted by Brandon said: “No, we got no contact, no contact at all. It’s absolutely a disaster really.”
Asked for details of the report and whether families of Brandon’s victims were interviewed, the department said: “It is expected that Minister Norma Foley is likely to receive a report on the matter from the independent chair Colm Lehane in the coming weeks”.
Senior sources within the department said the report was “largely finished” and would be published “shortly”.
