THE CENTRAL Mental Hospital is not a suitable place in which to detain a man with a moderate learning disability who is facing allegations of sexual assault, a consultant forensic psychiatrist has told a circuit court in Dundalk.
The patient (28), who is mentally unfit to plead, has been placed in a low stimulus, high-staff section of the hospital for his own safety.
Dr Paul O’Connell told Dundalk Circuit Court yesterday that Ireland did not have a forensic disability-learning facility for such patients.
The court had ordered that a report on the long-term options for the accused be prepared after he was assessed by a clinical psychiatrist as being unfit to be tried.
Dr O’Connell told the court the man was “a vulnerable adult” and needed the services available in a forensic disability-learning facility.
When John Martin, defending, put it to him that the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Dublin, was not ideal for the accused man’s needs but was the only designated centre, he replied “Yes”.
Dr O’Connell said the hospital provided therapeutic services and managed the risks people presented to one another, but in his view, the accused could be managed in a “medium to low system of security”.
Such systems did exist in other jurisdictions but not in Ireland. Nevertheless, there was probably sufficient need for such a forensic learning facility to exist here, he added.
The court also heard that the accused man had a persistent disorder and would be at immediate risk of reoffending if he was returned to his home.
“He would be going back to the setting he was in when the allegations arose and there is nothing I can see to materially reduce that risk,” Dr O’Connell said.
It is “a catch-22 situation”, the court was told.
The doctor also said there is a “human rights issue” in that he was being treated in a hospital where the level of security was higher than required.
Judge Michael O’Shea said the appropriate order under the Criminal Law Insanity Act 2006 was that he be committed as an inpatient at the Central Mental Hospital and that he should receive care and treatment there until such time as another order is made by the courts.
After the case, Dr O’Connell said the man was the only such individual in the Central Mental Hospital.
He was in an environment with other adults who were mentally ill but otherwise “unimpaired intellectually”, he added. This left him vulnerable to exploitation and “liable to being assaulted” if he said something inappropriate.
“He is at risk and has been placed in a low-stimulus high-staff area,” he said. However these hazards were avoidable by providing such people with proper services, he added.
The recent changes in legislation here were welcome, Dr O’Connell said, but pressure on services would be increased.
Forensic disability learning facilities existed in the UK in both the private and public health sectors, he added.