The State has failed to provide a secure treatment centre for a 12-year-old child destined, in the absence of appropriate psychiatric help, to develop into a vicious serial rapist, the High Court has been told.
Mr Justice Kelly said yesterday that the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had graphically outlined, to psychiatrists and psychologists who assessed him, how he planned to kill his victims in the event of their refusing to have sex with him.
"I have no doubt that if there is not a substantial psychiatric and psychological involvement now this situation will not improve but will get worse and in a very few years, when this court no longer has jurisdiction to do anything for this child, he is going to prove a danger not merely to himself but to any woman whom he desires to have intercourse with," Judge Kelly said.
He said that 14 months ago recourse had been made to the High Court in exercise of its constitutional jurisdiction with a view to providing some sort of support for the boy. Reports demonstrated he was mildly mentally handicapped and suffering from considerable personality disorder.
"The sort of manifestations which have been demonstrated are very worrying," Mr Justice Kelly said. "He has been able to describe in very graphic detail his intent concerning women and girls. He has made it clear it is his desire to force sexual intercourse upon them by violence if necessary and has described in a degree of detail which is hard to credit in respect of a 12-year-old how he would bring that about and how, if necessary, he would kill somebody if they did not co-operate."
Mr Justice Kelly said it was a very disturbing case. The boy was the fourth-youngest of nine children and four years ago in September 1995 he had first come to the notice of the authorities. He had ceased to attend school and after beginning to stay out late at night the social services became involved. His parents had found him impossible to manage and he resorted to begging on the streets.
For the last four years the Southern Health Board had been unsuccessfully involved in finding suitable residential units for him. He was not suffering from a diagnosable mental illness but he was undoubtedly going to prove to be a very considerable burden on the population and almost inevitably, unless something was done for him now, would end up spending a substantial part of his life in jail.
"But before that he will have done untold damage to some person or persons who get in his way," Mr Justice Kelly said. It was well known there was in this jurisdiction the psychiatric and psychological skills necessary to help the boy but in order to be able to bring those skills to bear in a beneficial way for the child, there had to be an appropriate setting in which those skilled helpers could get to work.
Fourteen months ago he had been ordered by the court to be detained in Oberstown Boys Centre which was unsuitable for him in that he was being held with others up to four years older than him and who were facing criminal charges from murder downwards and who were bullying him.
Mr Justice Kelly said he could not be released into a family environment where he could not be controlled and where he would resort to the sort of activities he was involved in before. It would ultimately lead to his own destruction or somebody else's destruction or both.
He ordered the Southern Health Board to make inquiries in relation to the suitability of mental hospitals for his secure detention and treatment and report back to the court next Tuesday week. Stating he would interrupt his holiday to facilitate the further hearing, Mr Justice Kelly said the problem was going to have to be solved.