She was just 18 and already a mother. And this week was found in a basement, dead of a drug overdose. Kitty Holland on the life and death of a child failed by the system
When Tracey Fay's body was found just after noon last Thursday 24th January, she had been there for at least 24 hours. Her small frame was found amid discarded sleeping bags and dirty blankets, outside the toilet area of a disused basement in Dublin's Granby Row - a busy street about two minutes walk from O'Connell Street.
She died of a suspected drug overdose. She was just two months past her 18th birthday.
Those months meant the Northern Area Health Board was no longer legally responsible for her.
However, the fact that the young mother of two had continued to live in the sheltered environment of Orchard View, a group home owned by the Board in the Grangegorman area, indicated perhaps a degree of recognition that Tracey had needs beyond those of an average 18-year-old.
Too little recognition, too late, say those who knew and tried to help her. Not only friends who knew her from the streets or from the various homeless hostels she frequented, but social workers, describe watching Tracey disintegrate before their eyes while she drifted through the services without ever getting the help she needed.
"Tracey was mad, needed to be locked up for her own good," said one girl, formerly homeless herself, who first knew her when she was 14.
"You'd see her out, wandering the streets every night with a different fella, always just looking for someone to love her I think."
"She was the most exposed, vulnerable, undefended child I have ever come across," said a social worker who came in contact with her when she first left home, and who has worked in child care for over 10 years.
"She had absolutely no one and nothing protecting her. No matter who we tried to get to listen, nothing consistent was done for her".
Tracey was the first child born to Doreen Fay, a young woman from the Artane area of Dublin, in November 1983.
Though little is known about her early childhood it is understood her mother began a relationship with a man, not Tracey's father, about two years later.
Through these years she suffered physical abuse, neglect and abandonment.
She went to live with her maternal grandparents when she was six, in the Harmonstown area, and began staying out all night when her grandmother became ill with cancer when she was 14.
By this stage her mother had moved to England with her partner with whom she is said to have had a number of children.
When her grandmother died, Tracey left the home altogether. Some say her grandfather could not cope with her while others euphemistically say "he didn't exactly like her".
"When her granny died, she knew she had no one."
It was at this point, in 1997, that she first came to the attention of the then Eastern Health Board, when she made contact with the Out of Hours service for homeless children.
In theory this service, open from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. makes contact with children who are out of home, finds them an emergency bed, assesses their needs and makes a report to the Community Care team from their area, who should then take on the case the next morning.
In theory, the Out of Hours service should see a child once or twice and the system should then kick in to cater for that child's needs.
Like hundreds of other kids, however, Tracey came back to the service night after night after night, for months.
"Tracey had very, very special needs. She was like a little child, 14 going on four," says one social worker who came into contact with her at this time.
"You couldn't have a normal conversation with Tracey, like she was in a world of her own. You'd be talking to her seriously about one thing and she'd suddenly stop, look at you and ask, 'When are you going to buy me that jacket?',"
Though sexual abuse was never verified, another worker describes the young teenager as having been "dramatically sexualised by the time she came to us".
Samantha, a young woman who knew Tracey since the two were in the same hostel at the end of 1997, says Tracey was "always throwing herself at the male staff, running after them half in the nip. We thought it was a great laugh at the time, but looking back, it was strange. She was always sleeping with different men, whether they were young fellas, old fellas, drunks, Travellers, black fellas. She was always on the arm of some fella, just looking for someone to be loving to her."
At the same time she seems to have begun and on-off relationship with a man five years her senior. The fact that this 14- year-old was sleeping with a 19- year-old was brought to the attention of Health Board, says one social worker, "but no one listened".
Towards the end of 1997 she was placed in Le Froy House, a hostel for young girls, on Eden Quay, where she stayed for about five months. Samantha describes a young teenager, over-eager to please, willing to do anything for anyone, "if they'd like her".
"She had no confidence, didn't think she was lovely or anything. I remember one time two girls in the hostel put her in a blanket with a paper cup on O'Connell Bridge to get money for them to go out dancing. And she was all excited, waving, saying, 'I nearly have it, I nearly have it'."
She left there after five months - "she couldn't take it" - and drifted between the streets and B&B after B&B. Between 1997 and her death she had over 14 "unsuitable placements", according to court affidavits.
She had her first meeting with a psychiatrist in December 1998, who reported a "very vulnerable" girl, "in urgent need of a secure residential placement".
A second report described the level of care Tracey was getting as "disastrous", while a third described Tracey as feeling "helpless and abandoned and incompetent to take charge of her life".
At no point, despite numerous calls for one by social workers, was a care plan ever devised for Tracey.
She was, says one "a baby child in a young woman's body. She had no concept of harm happening to her, like an angle lost".
At 15 she became pregnant for the first time, and, says Samantha, was "delighted".
"The services swooped in when she produced a baby, but they forgot she was a baby herself," says one source.
She was placed in Eglinton House, a mother-and-baby support unit in Donnybrook, 8 weeks before the birth of her son. Her parenting skills, however, were "disastrous" and the baby was taken into care at 4 months.
"She was in bits. All she talked about after that was getting her baby back, was up in court by herself the whole time fighting for him, saying she wanted her ma there to help her. It was like she wanted to make up for the love her ma never gave her," says Samantha.
After Eglinton House, she was back between streets and bed and breakfasts, which she had to leave during the day. She became pregnant again towards the end of 2000, when she was 17 and had a daughter in June last year.
Sources say she was frightened of losing her daughter, but in some ways her birth allowed her to forget about getting her son back.
"She'd say, 'They're letting me keep this one.' The focus was on the girl now". She was placed in Orchard View last year and stayed there even after her daughter was taken into care.
A friend saw Tracey on O'Connell Street just two weeks ago, and said she was in "amazing form, just talking about getting the babies back."
Asked whether she ever talked of a future, one woman, who fostered a girl who had been in a hostel with Tracey said, "she just seemed to live day to day, never talked about her future. She did talk a lot about her mother, saying she wanted her to come back and help her".
She was reported missing by Orchard View staff on 20th January. The dark haired girl with the "kiddie looks" was found dead four days later.
Though Garda say she died of a suspected drugs overdose, Samantha insists Tracey never touched drugs. "She had a very simple view of things and drugs scared her."
However, she got a phone call from Tracey on New Year's Eve, when she told her she had a new boyfriend who was "trying to get her to take drugs".
"And she was so biddable", says another, "wouldn't have known she was being treated badly. You have to be very tough to survive the child-care system. And Tracey didn't survive."
Tracey's children are currently the subject of custody proceedings in the District Court.