Daniel McAnaspie “could have been saved” if he had been provided secure care, an inquest heard on Tuesday.
Aileen Dunne, who was Daniel’s guardian ad litem when he was murdered, said it was “unfathomable” that a special care committee in the HSE had turned down four social-worker applications in 2009 for secure care for him.
[ Teenager Daniel McAnespie had begged social workers to ‘have him locked up’, inquest hears ]
A young person who is deemed to be at such risk to themselves or others so as to need therapeutic residential care may be detained in secure care by the High Court following an application by childcare services.
The 17-year-old, originally from Finglas, north Dublin, was murdered while in care in 2010. He had had more than 20 care placements in the 15 months before he died as his life became increasingly chaotic.
These included the now-disused out-of-hours service where young people in care, without a long-term placement, presented at a Garda station at midnight for a bed in a hostel.
Daniel, who had been known to care services from birth and was in state care from aged 10, was stabbed to death on February 26th, 2010, at Tolka Valley Park, Dublin 11. His badly decomposed remains were found in a drainage ditch in Co Meath by a farmer almost three months later.
Richard Dekker, from Blanchardstown, was sentenced to life in 2017 for his murder. Trevor Noone, then 29 and also from Blanchardstown, was imprisoned for 13 years for manslaughter in 2017. In July 2022, Dekker, then in his mid-30s, lost his appeal against his conviction. Both were older than Daniel.
The inquest, scheduled to run for a week, marks the end of a 15-year legal process for the McAnaspie family. Daniel was the fourth of six children whose father died in December 1996 and mother died in September 2007.
Ms Dunne told Meath coroner’s court in Trim how in the absence of a secure care placement she had recommended he be sent for therapeutic secure care at Hassela Gotland in Sweden.
She said Daniel and his family were in favour of this, but it was opposed by the HSE.
“This boy was running out of options and getting more and more at risk,” Ms Dunne said. “It was actually frightening to meet him and see the upset, the distress.” He had drug debts and “seemed to under so much pressure all the time”.
“I don’t want any child in this country locked [up], but I do believe in Daniel’s head he knew he needed that ... He had this level of impulsivity that he was not able to regulate and he knew that ... He wanted to be contained. He needed someone to keep him safe,” she told the six-person jury.
“At that time, had we secured a placement for him ... it could have saved him. That is the tragedy of it.”
Avril Connolly, Daniel’s social worker at the time of his death, described efforts “to keep Daniel safe” from March 2009. Describing him as “very lost soul, a lost orphaned soul”, she said Daniel had “wit and empathy, sincere love for his family and simple wishes for his future”.
Her work with him involved “considerable firefighting and emergency responding to crisis events” including placement breakdowns, bringing him to hospital and multiple applications for secure care, which he needed “urgently”, she said.
She opposed Ms Dunne’s recommendation at a District Court hearing in 2009 that Daniel be placed in Hassela Gotland.
She said on Tuesday she was not confident it would meet his needs and was concerned about removing him from Ireland and his family.
Ms Dunne, describing this as a “professional difference of opinion”, said: “Daniel was saying: ‘I’ll give it a go’. It is his voice I am here for.”
The hearing continues.
