Grace is not a victim of unfortunate oversight, but a citizen whose rights were repeatedly violated
Rosaleen McDonagh: ' News coverage of Grace's situation often fails to centre her as a person with rights. Cultural ableism thrives when language strips disabled people of our complexity, autonomy, and dignity.'
Living as a disabled woman in Ireland means being underestimated, having your capacity constantly questioned regardless of your impairment, being infantilised, silenced, excluded, and rendered a nuisance.
As women, we are marked by difference. Cultural and institutional memory often omits us, except for moments of public shame; even then, we are not centred — merely exposed. The story of Grace, a non-speaking, intellectually disabled woman left in an abusive ‘foster’ home for decades, is not just one of personal harm.
Like many wrongdoings in Ireland, it is cloaked in euphemism, delayed accountability, and procedural malpractice. As a nation, we are culpable of collusion and cultural dissonance.
In 1989, Grace was placed by the State in a ‘foster’ home that was never assessed or registered for foster or respite. The placement wasn’t an oversight; it was a bureaucratic gamble with a disabled child’s life.
For decades, the State looked away. Reports of abuse circulated for years.
The first real public conversation about vulnerability and disability emerged much later, amid outrage sparked by the Ryan Report (2009) and the Áras Attracta scandal (2014). These moments should have created a lasting national transformation, but outrage without structural change is merely a performance of eloquent rhetoric claiming shock and disgust.
There is an inertia surrounding the abuse and mistreatment of disabled children and adults in this country. The Farrelly Commission and the State’s decision not to proceed with the second phase has left 47 children unaccounted for.
Ireland has signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). However, it has still not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT), which would allow for independent monitoring of settings where people are deprived of liberty.
Ireland’s discourse surrounding disabled lives is reductionist, patronising, and insulting in its reporting of Grace; this insulates systemic actors from critique. News coverage of her situation often fails to centre her as a person with rights. Cultural ableism thrives when language strips disabled people of our complexity, autonomy, and dignity. Philosopher Miranda Fricker describes this phenomenon as epistemic injustice — when someone is denied credibility or recognition as a knower of their own life.
Grace, through her legal team, submitted extensive materials to the Farrelly Commission, but none were included. The result was a 2000-page report about her, from which her mediated voice was excluded.
The Farrelly Commission, established in 2017, arrived late and left early. Phase two — which was intended to explore the experiences of 47 additional children placed in the same abusive home — was abandoned. Officially, this was deemed “too complex.” The omission of the second phase is not merely a policy gap but an ethical failure. It denied others like Grace - such as Frances O'Keeffe, featured in these pages yesterday - the opportunity to name their harm and be heard.
Here, we encounter profound cultural dissonance: policies, practices, and procedures treat disabled lives, voices, and experiences as inconvenient. The disability lens is rarely included as a perspective in public inquiry and never as the central framework. We are not considered worthy of an easy-to-read format or an executive summary. Grace’s status as a ward of court meant she had representation and a right to speak; yet, the inquiry into her treatment refused to include her submissions. Throughout the Farrelly Report, there is no trace of her as a legal subject, no evidence of her, and no formal communication with her by the Commission.
Grace’s narrative is gendered. Most abuse cases in institutional care, such as Áras Attracta, involve disabled women. Misogyny, like ableism, is embedded in the perception of harm as minimal. Disabled women often experience multiple forms of erasure: we are deemed too dependent to consent, too marginal to protect, and too complex to be believed.
This erasure is linguistic as much as legal. Reports often use the passive voice — “mistakes were made,” “oversight failed.” When the language of bureaucracy overtakes the moral clarity required to name harm, disabled women like Grace become collateral damage in the pursuit of institutional self-preservation.
The facts of the case are not ambiguous. Grace was placed in an un-inspected foster home. She remained there for 20 years despite a documented history of abuse concerns. The State had multiple opportunities to intervene — and chose not to. In 2017, the Farrelly Commission was formed. In 2024, it issued its report — over 2000 pages, €13m spent — and Grace’s voice was still absent.
Grace is not a singular failure but a symbol of systemic neglect. Her story is one chapter in a broader narrative that Ireland has yet to confront: the persistent, patterned erasure of disabled people from our histories, protections, and safety. If justice is to mean anything, it must begin with truth. That means revisiting the Farrelly Report—not with neutrality but with moral clarity. It means reinstating phase two. It means recognising Grace not as a victim of unfortunate oversight but as a citizen whose rights were repeatedly violated.
Like so many others, Grace’s voice will remain silent in the public record until we rewrite it—not posthumously, but now, while we still have time to act.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
