Gail O’Rorke: friend who acted ‘out of loyalty, out of love’

Shortly before ending her life, Bernadette Forde sat in her south Dublin apartment and recorded her final words. In her verbal suicide note, captured on a dictaphone, she set out how frustrated she had become at the prospect of having to plan her own death without support.

“I just can’t keep going. Hiding it from friends has been difficult and it’s just so unfair that I can’t have any contact or chat to anyone - that I have to be totally alone,” she said. “It’s me and only me and no one else. I’m just very frustrated it has to be this way.”

In the recording, Ms Forde (51) explained her decision to die, prompted by the aggressive onset of multiple sclerosis which was diagnosed 10 years earlier. It was an effort to absolve her friends of conspiracy and it framed perfectly the moral dilemma of assisted suicide - whether the prosecution warned of its irrelevance or not - underlying the trial of her friend Gail O’Rorke (43).

Successful career Before her diagnosis in 2001, Ms Forde was fiercely independent and had a successful career in human resources in Guinness. Elizabeth Cremin, head of the residential association of Morehampton Mews in Donnybrook where Ms Forde lived, described her as private and very in control of her life.

Her nephew Bernard Forde Monaghan said she had wanted to die on her own terms and that nobody could have persuaded her otherwise. "She said she didn't' want people looking after her," he told the trial. "She didn't want men to be bathing her or dressing her."

Her sister, Beatrice Forde Monaghan, said it wasn't possible to dissuade Ms Forde of her views. "You couldn't really talk to Bernadette like that. She had her own opinions."

Ms Forde first met Ms O’Rorke in or around 2003 when the Tallaght woman began working for her as a cleaner. Friendship followed quickly and the pair began to spend more time together, with Ms Forde becoming ever more reliant on and closer to her friend and carer as her MS progressed.

“Bernadette was angry over the disease but she was accepting,” Ms O’Rorke later told gardaí.

In 2008, while driving, Ms Forde had a muscle spasm in her leg, causing her foot to punch the accelerator and send the car slamming into a wall. Ms O’Rorke, a passenger in the car at the time, was hospitalised but not seriously hurt. However, Ms Forde was badly injured and left in a coma. When she left hospital, she was confined to a wheelchair having shattered both knees.

In a letter discovered after her death, she wrote that Ms O’Rorke did not “hold the crash against me” and continued to look after her. “She deserves so much,” she wrote. “I can’t give her anything.”

She was by now even more dependent on Ms O'Rorke. Soon after the crash, she began to voice her suicidal intention. She first raised the prospect of travelling to Dignitas, the euthanasia support organisation in Switzerland, after the death from cancer of her sister Marcena in 2010.

Ms Forde discussed her intentions with Ms O’Rorke, who later said she supported the decision but had no idea of the potential legal implications of helping arrange a visit to Dignitas.

Travel plans In March, 2011 Caroline Lynch received a phone call in Rathgar Travel from Ms O'Rorke asking for information on flights, taxi transfers and hotel accommodation suitable for a disabled person in Zurich. Ms O'Rorke told the travel agent of their plans to visit Dignitas. Concerned about the legality of organising such a trip, Ms Lynch sought advice and subsequently contacted gardaí.

When she went to collect the tickets, gardaí approached Ms O’Rorke. She went with them to the Garda station, fully co-operating, where she was told what she was doing was a potential offence.

“Obviously, there is a moral issue and an emotional issue,” Sgt Declan Sheeran said of the encounter. “I can’t say that she was aware of the offence but we made her aware of it.”

Ms O’Rorke was not arrested at that stage.

Ms Forde contacted another euthanasia organisation called Exit International to seek out alternatives after her plans to visit Dignitas collapsed.

"She had to settle on a means, not unduly painful or distressing, not something violent and also something that is reliable," explained Remy Farrell, the barrister who prosecuted the case.

He claimed Ms O'Rorke was "instrumental" in helping her friend order over the internet from Mexico the drugs (barbiturates ) which ultimately ended her life . Ms O'Rorke was acquitted of this charge during the trial by direction of Judge Patrick McCartan.

“I was terrified of having anything to do with it. She had totally taken over her own stuff. She was trying to keep us all as safe as she could,” Ms O’Rorke later told gardaí.

Mr Farrell pointed out that under the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 it is not an offence to take one’s own life, but it is to assist somebody else in doing so.

The court was also told Ms O’Rorke helped her friend plan funeral arrangements - another related charge of which she was acquitted during the trial - by holding a three way conversation between her and an undertaker.

Ms O’Rorke’s help and friendship led Ms Forde to include her in her will. Solicitor Maurice O’Callaghan told the trial that before his client’s suicide, she had instructed that Ms O’Rorke inherit 30 per cent of the residue of her estate - that which had not been bequeathed to others in specific provisions. Mr O’Callaghan said he was certain she knew what she was doing and that there had been no question of undue influence.

Ms Forde told her solicitor she had chosen to include her friend as “Gail makes her life better.”

A known wish Many people were aware of Ms Forde's wish to die. While there was evidence given that another friend had been with her when she took an overdose in June 2011, Ms Forde's own recorded words sought to dismiss any suggestion anyone else had been involved.

“After the Dignitas experience I realised that I had to do what I needed to do on my own in case anyone would be implicated,” she said. “It’s what I wanted and what else can I do?”

Ms Forde took an overdose of pentobarbital, a short acting barbiturate which slows down the brain and depresses the central nervous system.

Ms O’Rorke later told gardaí she had a gut feeling something was going to happen but she could not stop it. “I’m glad she did what she had to do and is at peace,” she said. “I’m also glad she didn’t tell me as I would have refused to help.”

Towards the end of the trial, Judge McCartan ordered the jury to find Ms O’Rorke not guilty of two charges - those of helping “procure” Ms Forde’s suicide by assisting with making funeral arrangements before her death, and of ordering the barbiturates she took to kill herself.

As the jury went out, the judge told them they had only to decide her guilt or innocence on the charge of making travel arrangements to visit Dignitas in Switzerland. She was acquitted of the charge.

The trial heard gardaí did not charge Ms O’Rorke or initiate a criminal investigation in relation to the travel plans at the time as they opted for the “humanitarian route” instead. At the time they contacted Ms Forde’s family and the HSE.

Although never explained, this charge was eventually brought in the aftermath of Ms Forde’s suicide. Judge McCartan told the jury during his charge, it was “open to the guards to change their views”.

‘Decent person’

“Gail O’Rorke is an exceptionally decent person,” Remy Farrell said in his closing speech to the jury. “There can be no doubt that everything she did was informed out of loyalty, out of love, for Ms Forde. I want to be entirely clear that the prosecution do not for a moment suggest otherwise.”

Yet he appealed to them to consider whether or not, simply and straightforwardly, the law had been broken; it was not for them to ponder the larger questions of morality or choice. “You don’t get to determine what the law is and what the law should be,” he said.

After all, at another point he reminded them that everyone listening to this case - lawyers, journalists and members of the public alike - had probably asked themselves the same question: “What would I do if I were in Gail O’Rorke’s position?”