Derval McDonagh: We cannot say what happened to Grace will not happen again

While 2,400 people with intellectual disabilities still live in institutions, while we continue to think it’s OK for people to live their lives with fundamental rights and freedoms denied, we continue to create the conditions for more stories of abuse, more stories like Grace's

Wed, 16 Apr, 2025 - 12:30

Derval McDonagh

There are certain days that should serve as watershed moments in our story as a state. April 15, 2025, was one of them. The long-awaited, final report on the story of Grace was published.

This report details the cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of an intellectually disabled woman who was left in a foster home for almost 20 years despite numerous credible allegations of her abuse and neglect. The findings of the report detail a litany of missed opportunities and failures by the State.

The publication of the report has caused a ripple of emotion across our community at Inclusion Ireland. Our team, our board and our members are mainly disabled people and family members of disabled people. Our work is therefore deeply personal. Grace could be one of us, Grace could be our sister.

Anger, fear, worry, upset emotions our community are used to feeling as scandal after scandal hit the headlines. We are almost becoming immune to this cycle — horrific story, public outcry, followed by silence. We are left wondering, have we learned our lesson finally? What will it take for the State to say the words “never again” with conviction? What will it take for us to believe those words to be true?

There have been many apologies offered to Grace throughout the years. What is needed, far more than another apology, is justice. The kind of justice which is about real truth telling, a real reckoning with what we have done and what we continue to do as a State.

When I reflect on what happened to Grace, what the State allowed to happen, I have to pull the thread through the story of our long sad history of institutionalisation in Ireland. Yes, Grace was in a foster home, not an institution, but her experience is a direct result of a kind of mindset that in simple terms says: you are less deserving of safety, freedom and fundamental rights.

A State that has historically been so willing to lock “problems” away, to turn the other cheek, and to dehumanise, led to the neglect and abuse of Grace.

While we have closed many of the bigger institutions in Ireland, the legacy of the kind of thinking that led to their opening in the first place lives on today in our collective psyche. We don’t tend to want to face that.

It is a truth too painful — that actually there are people in our country who are treated as less than, as “other”, as people that need to be separate and segregated.

We often talk at Inclusion Ireland about “institutionality”. It’s not necessarily about the big institutions behind closed gates on a hill, but more about the pervasive mindset which strips people of their humanity and their rights.

Institutionality, if left unchecked, shows up in all sorts of insidious ways. It is in our thinking that children “don’t belong” in our local schools, it’s in our systems which deny people basic, timely supports to live a dignified life in their own homes, it’s in our turning away from the pain and hurt we have caused people.

Institutionality prides itself on closing one big house on the hill while stealthily, under the radar, opening another. We close large psychiatric hospitals and open more prisons. We close institutions for disabled people and find 1,300 disabled people under the age of 65 now live in nursing homes.

The revolving door of institutions “reimagined” is one we must open our minds to if we are to stop the cycle of abuse, scandal, rinse, repeat.

Let's not have the audacity to assume a story like Grace’s will never happen again. While 2,400 people with intellectual disabilities still live in institutions, while children in the care of the State are supported in unregulated emergency accommodation, while we have no legislation to safeguard adults from abuse, while we continue to think it’s OK for people to live their lives with fundamental rights and freedoms denied, we continue to create the conditions for more stories of abuse, more stories like Grace's.

There is a significant opportunity for the State right now to ensure justice for Grace as the new National Disability Strategy is in the final stages of its completion. Every disabled child and adult who is at risk of abuse or neglect should have access to an advocate. 

We need to fund the National Advocacy Service for adults properly. We need to establish an advocacy service for disabled children. Most of all, we need to signal a deep culture shift away from institutional thinking and towards human rights-based supports for people to live a life of freedom, a life free from abuse and harm. 

The Farrelly Commission has made the recommendation around next steps: an independent non-statutory inquiry into the experience of other potential survivors from the same foster home.

It is time for our deep humility as a State. To not hide behind a veneer of semi truths — yes things have improved in this country in many ways over the last 20 years, but in many ways for our community, things have not improved at all.

The same oppressive structures still exist, the lack of legislation framed through a human rights lens, the appalling treatment of disabled people having to wait to be in “crisis” before the State offers what should be readily available basic, human supports. Anything less than the full truth about that is a further denial of Grace's humanity, Grace’s story.

I wonder where Grace is now, how she is now. I wonder if she is surrounded by loving people. I wonder if she has had hope and kindness in her life. I wonder if she has experienced joy, connection, laughter. I hope so. I hope we are willing now to do the work with grace, for Grace.