Court orders search for runaway teenage girls

Two seriously disturbed teenage girls have escaped from the care of two different health boards, the High Court heard yesterday. One of the girls had been detained at the Central Mental Hospital (CMH), Dundrum, Dublin, but escaped yesterday morning while attending a training project outside the hospital.

The second girl, a victim of sexual abuse, managed to flee while in the garden of a controlled therapeutic unit, the location of which was not revealed in court. On the separate application of both health boards, Mr Justice Kelly issued warrants directing the Garda to search for, arrest, detain and return both girls to the institutions where they had been held.

Mr Stephen McCann, for the East Coast Area Health Board, told the judge that a 17-year-old girl - who had been detained at the CMH since March in the absence of a suitable alternative place for her - had absented herself yesterday from a training centre.

The centre had immediately alerted the CMH and the board. When sent to the CMH, the girl, while not mentally ill, was described as "a serious risk" to herself and others. She had previously been detained in the acute psychiatric unit of a general hospital and it was stated she had cut herself with razors, behaved aggressively and threatened to kill people.

Her case had been before Mr Justice Kelly last Monday when he was told she had made good progress and no longer needed to be in high-security premises. He had heard the board was proposing to make a staffed house available to her as a "step-down" facility.

Earlier yesterday, the judge was told another seriously disturbed girl had escaped on Tuesday from a controlled therapeutic unit operated by another health board. The judge directed that the board should not be named as this could lead to the girl's identity being established.

The girl had been in foster care from the age of one and had been sexually abused at the age of 10. She had abused solvents, drugs and alcohol and had a history of attempts to harm herself.

After the most recent attempt, she had been moved from a State remand centre last April to the locked ward of an adult psychiatric unit, where she was kept with 30 seriously mentally ill adults. A consultant psychiatrist had described the unit as totally unsuitable and had also expressed grave ethical concerns about having to administer an injection to the girl against her will, in order to contain her behaviour.

Yesterday the judge heard that the girl, on moving into the unit, had been unsettled and had made three assaults on staff. However, he was told, the girl appeared to have settled since. On Tuesday, at about 4.15 p.m., she had been taking a break in the garden, monitored by two staff. She had headed into a hedgerow at the back of the unit. The staff had followed her, but she got away.

The judge was told the girl was last seen on the road from Collon, Co Louth, to Drogheda. Gardai at several stations in the north-east had been alerted.