Fintan O’Toole: State has reached crisis of irresponsibility that resonates far beyond Grace’s grim story

It is now almost 30 years since a woman wrote a letter to the South-Eastern Health Board pleading with it to investigate an allegation of the sexual abuse of her intellectually disabled daughter a decade previously.

The girl had just disclosed to her that “she was sexually molested by the husband of the woman she stayed with” for respite care.

“To say the least,” the mother wrote in March 1996, “I am extremely upset… The reason I’m writing this letter is to stop it from happening some other child. All through the summer months those people take in handicapped children for a fee of around £70... The name of them is [Mrs X], [a location in southeast]. I don’t know the full address, but I would like them to be investigated thoroughly before any more children suffer.”

[ ‘Grace’ final report finds evidence of serious neglect but not sexual or emotional abuse ]

This plea was urgent. Yet three long decades yawn between a state body being asked by a mother to “stop it from happening to any other child” and the State coming up with its final accounting of what indeed happened to another child in the same foster home, the girl known as Grace.