Inspectors from the healthcare watchdog witnessed a resident engaging in “inappropriate sexual behaviour” at the Stranorlar residential centre into which an investigation has been launched.
The inspector says the incident was ignored by staff at the same HSE-run campus in Co Donegal where a former resident carried out more than 100 sexual assaults on intellectually disabled adults.
This incident happened during an inspection of the Edencrest, Riverside and Cloghan flat on September 21, 2021, according to the Hiqa inspection report released on Wednesday.
Inspectors from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) “observed one of the residents on the couch engaging in inappropriate sexual behaviour, which was not responded to by agency staff who were supporting them”.
The unit is included in the Ard Gréine Court campus in Stranolar, where the National Independent Review Panel found a former resident, given the pseudonym ‘Brandon’, carried out at least 108 sexual assaults on 18 intellectually disabled adults, most of them non-verbal, between 2003 and 2016, with the full knowledge of the centre’s management despite repeated attempts by nursing staff to stop the abuse.
The assaults continued even though he was moved numerous times to different wards until he was ultimately moved to Brentwood Manor, a private nursing home in Convoy, Co Donegal, in May 2016 where he died in 2020.
A redacted version of the panel’s report on the abuse – which has not been fully published – was described by HSE chief executive Paul Reid as “one of the most repulsive reports I’ve read, and one of the most gruesome reports I’ve had to read in my career”.
Local independent TD Thomas Pringle, who brought the abuse to light after he was approached by a whistleblower in 2016, said the fact a HIQA inspector witnessed another resident engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviour at the same complex as recently as last September is “shocking.”
“After everything they’ve gone through, for that to continue is shocking,” he told the Irish Independent.
The incident was one of many findings of non-compliance of regulations at the centre and six other HSE-run residential centres for the disabled that were cited by Hiqa in their inspection reports. Among them are concerns over “crisis staffing levels”, risk management, safeguarding of residents, staff and visitors and fire regulations.
The inspection at the Edencrest unit was a “follow-up risk inspection” from a previous visit by Hiqa on March 2, 2021 in which “significant risks in quality and safety of care were identified in the centre” prompting the watchdog to issue a warning letter that the service provider (the HSE) was at risk of having its registration cancelled.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the HSE said: “Improvements are required to achieve compliance with the regulations inspected across three of the four centres.
“The HSE has submitted detailed compliance plans to Hiqa to address these issues and the improvement actions have been accepted by Hiqa.”
