DEAD GIRL WAS ON GARDA 'AT RISK' LIST

There is mounting pressure for a public inquiry into the Garda's handling
of the missing teenager, Kim O'Donovan, who was found dead in a Dublin
city-centre guest house last Thursday. The teenager had been missing from
the care of the Eastern Health Board for four weeks and a bench warrant had
been issued for her arrest.

Under Garda investigative procedures, Kim O'Donovan was an ``at risk''
missing person. However, their failure to trace the missing teenager has
called into question the level of priority given to her disappearance, as
well as the execution of the High Court bench warrant.

The Sunday Independent has learned that gardai did not use their computer
system, Pulse, to circulate details of the missing teenager but used telex
to notify gardai stations nationwide. The investigation into her
whereabouts was handled by officers from Wicklow Garda station.

According to the Garda Press Office, the garda who took the report then
forwarded details to the Wicklow divisional headquarters in Wexford. From
there, notification was sent to the Missing Persons Bureau at Garda
Headquarters in Dublin. The Crime and Security Branch was responsible for
the handling of the bench warrant for the teenager's arrest.

The Garda Press Office could not confirm how long this process of
notification took, but already this weekend, the Minister for Health
Micheal Martin has asked for a report from the Health Board and the gardai
on the matter.

Kim O'Donovan was the adopted daughter of Ronnie and Maura O'Donovan. The
couple adopted her when she was 18 months old. Kim had been placed for
adoption by her natural mother when she was four months old. She lived with
her adoptive parents and their two sons, Andrew and Stephen, in the
affluent Dublin suburb of Dalkey. She grew up in a ``normal, loving, caring
family environment'', but she had problems, according to a statement issued
by her parents.

``Kim was always disturbed. From an early age we consulted with her
teachers, child counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists in relation to
Kim's problems,'' they said.

As a result of professional advice, Kim was committed to the care of the
Eastern Health Board in 1997 and kept in residential care at Newtown House
in Wicklow up to July 28 this year.

The teenager was due in court on July 31 to have her care order extended
but she absconded two days earlier. She wrote a heartfelt letter to Mr
Justice Peter Kelly, begging not to be sent back. She asked that she be
placed with a foster family and said that the reason she had absconded was
that a promise of a foster family placement had been broken.

Before being committed to care, she had run away to England. At Newtown
House, a high-support unit for troubled teenagers, she said she had become
drug-free. She told the judge that she was ``capable and intelligent'' and
no longer needed to be in care.

``I am no longer a danger to myself or others. I am no longer in need of
high support and would like to start rebuilding my life, please,'' she pleaded.

But unfortunately for her she no longer has a life. Kim died, seemingly
alone and friendless, of a heart attack brought on by a drug overdose in a
city-centre B&B.