The long-awaited final report on the so-called “Grace” case, costing almost €14 million and with more costs to come, found no evidence to support sexual, emotional or physical abuse of the young woman at its centre.
At its publication on Tuesday Minister for Children Norma Foley appeared to distance herself from the six-volume, almost 2,000-page report by senior counsel Marjorie Farrelly, who began her investigation in 2017.
Describing the case of the intellectually disabled, non-verbal woman referred to as “Grace”, who experienced severe neglect in an unvetted “foster home” in the southeast of the country for 20 years, as “harrowing”, Ms Foley would not publicly endorse the report at Tuesday’s press briefing on it.
“Ms Farrelly is in possession of all of the facts. This is what she has presented. This is her report, her findings,” said Ms Foley.
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The inquiry report found evidence of “serious neglect” and “financial mismanagement” in the case of the young woman, given the pseudonym Grace.
Grace, who was born in 1978 to a teenage mother, had been placed in the “foster home” at the age of 11 and remained there until 2009 despite credible concerns about sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Ms Foley criticised the time taken to complete the report, the absence of an executive summary and the commission’s failure to notify individuals who gave evidence to the report in advance of its publication.
“It has been very frustrating that it has taken this amount of time. I think eight years is an enormous amount of time,” said the Minister.
“The fact there isn’t an executive summary, I find that difficult,” she said.
[ ‘Foster home’ carer denies ‘cruel’ abuse allegationsOpens in new window ]
Given the subject matter and its examination of events affecting intellectually disabled people, she would have liked “that there would be language that everybody could understand, everybody could reach into. That would be my way of doing it,” she said.
A decision not to conduct “phase two″ of the investigation, which would have looked at the experiences of 47 other children who spent time in the home, was not communicated to those families by the commission despite Ms Foley’s request that this be done.
Nor were they notified of the report’s imminent publication. Their identities are not known to the department, only to the commission.
“I did ask that everybody involved in this commission, providing evidence to the commission, that they be informed of my intention to publish. I made the request. The commission was not in a position to fulfil my request. She is independent,” said Ms Foley.
[ Q&A: Who is ‘Grace’ and what happened in her case?Opens in new window ]
“I would have preferred people got advance notice of this. It’s how I have operated ... The most important people are the people central to this and I do believe they deserved to get advance notice. They didn’t. That was the choice of the commission.”
The report assesses concerns of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of Grace during her 20 years in the care of the “Family X”. It says the evidence does not support findings of such abuse.
It does make findings that there was neglect of Grace in relation to her clothing, appearance, hygiene and dental care, but also notes that the HSE and South Eastern Health Board did not act in response to evident failings in Grace’s care in such areas when she was in the care of the woman named Mrs X in the report.
The report also notes the “devastating decline in Grace’s mental health and wellbeing” after she was moved to residential care in 2009, after living for 20 years in the care of Mrs X, who “knew Grace better than anyone else”.
