VINDICATED

By: Michael O’Farrell – Investigations Editor

SERIOUS allegations of child abuse involving several Midlands foster homes were never followed up, an internal Tusla review has confirmed.

Instead the allegations were repeatedly mishandled – and no efforts were made to protect other children at risk.

‘There is no evidence of follow-up recorded on the case files provided,’ Tusla’s confidential report reads.

The report was finalised in recent weeks after a former foster home resident – to whom we have given the pseudonym Saoirse – battled for a decade to expose the truth.

Along the way, her efforts to seek justice were repeatedly thwarted by a succession of Health Board, HSE, Garda and Tusla officials – as first reported by the Irish Mail on Sunday in January (see panel).

Now Tusla’s report – an internal case file review of how all of the allegations made by Saoirse were handled – confirms that:

• There is no evidence of any follow-through to ensure the other children in contact with Saoirse’s foster parents were safe.

• The son of Saoirse’s foster mother admitted sexually abusing one foster child (her younger sister) to gardaí – but was not prosecuted.

• Despite his admission, there is no evidence child safety authorities followed up with the 16 other foster children placed in the home.

• Tusla is unable to establish if the cases of 37 children in five other foster homes, in which abuse was alleged, were followed up properly.

The report states: ‘The case records do not provide evidence of the investigation of the allegations of retrospective abuse made.

‘The reviewers could not determine what decisions and actions were taken by the social work department, as there is no evidence of follow-up recorded on the case files provided.’ The report adds that those responsible also failed to ensure the risks posed to other children were considered.

‘The reviewers cannot verify (from a review of the case records) that an assessment of risk was completed by the social work department, and any follow-up decision-making with regard to the management of the reported allegations took place,’ it states.

There was, the review stated, ‘no evidence the social work department (Midland Health Board and latterly HSE) reported these retrospective abuse allegations to the gardaí’. This, it notes, impacted on the gardaí’s ability to carry out a criminal investigation into the alleged abuse.

Yet, in the case of Saoirse and one of her siblings, the HSE settled a High Court case against her former foster home – without acting to address the abuse concerns and the risks to other children.

This meant Saoirse’s foster mother continued to be involved with children and was recently given an award for her work by a child-focused community group.

It remains unexplained how the former foster mother was allowed to continue working with children since the role required Garda vetting.

The case of the foster mother’s biological son – who admitted sexually abusing a foster child at his mother’s home – was also considered by the report.

It identified a case conference in which social workers were tasked with meeting all 16 children placed with the family – but can’t verify if this was ever done. Instead, it could not ‘locate evidence of intra-agency communications between the social work department and An Garda Siocháná regarding the management and investigation of this case’.

In relation to concerns of abuse at five other foster homes the report identified that the need to investigate was at one time discussed by childcare officials – but appears to have never happened due to a lack of resources.

‘Significant gaps in case records’, missing files and poor record keeping also hampered the review. In particular, the records of the area childcare manager and of Child Protection Management Team Meetings (CPNMT) ‘could not be provided’. There is no explanation as to why.

Other key missing files include the area’s childcare manager’s file relating to Saoirse and her family and those of the social worker directly responsible for supervising Saoirse’s foster family.

An Garda Siocháná has already issued an apology for its failure to follow through on a criminal abuse complaint from Saoirse – which mysteriously vanished in 2009.

A GSOC disciplinary investigation into the loss of her original criminal complaint – which was quietly shelved and never investigated – is now under way.

In January – when the Irish Mail on Sunday first made Saoirse’s story public – Tusla chief executive Bernard Gloster also apologised unreservedly. But that apology has not yet been extended to any of Saoirse’s siblings who were also residents of the foster home.

Tusla has appointed a social worker to examine any possibility of ‘current risk’ to children as the alleged abusers are still alive but have never been held to account.