A MEMBER of the South Eastern Health Board has urged that a man with the mental age of a 12 year old sentenced for sexual abuse should not be sent to jail. The 33 year old man, who was repeatedly abused as a child, was sentenced to 18 months at Waterford Circuit Court two weeks ago.
Councillor Gary O'Halloran said the defendant, who is on the borderline of mental handicap, had been abused by his father, and by a Kilkenny priest to whose care he was entrusted by the probation service.
Cllr O'Halloran raised the matter at a meeting of the South Eastern Health Board yesterday.
Judge Sean O'Leary postponed imposing sentence on the man this week at Waterford Circuit Court, saying he was not a suitable candidate for prison. He is currently a voluntary patient in St Canice's psychiatric hospital in Kilkenny.
A High Court hearing to determine the health board's responsibility to accommodate the defendant is not due to conclude until January. But the board is not prepared to continue to provide facilities for the man until then.
Judge O'Leary said it was difficult to treat the defendant as anything other than a child, and it was the responsibility of the State to look after him in his child like condition.
Cllr O'Halloran said that "the buck is being passed" between the South Eastern Health Board, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice, each saying the other was responsible for the man's care.
"There is no facility for people who have been marginalised to the extent that they can never be left into open society again. It is, the State that is culpable in this case. It is up to the State to take proper and permanent care of this young man for the remainder of his life," he told The Irish Times.