The consultant who exposed shocking failures at Kerry’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services has welcomed an opportunity to meet with Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Dr Maya Sharma first raised concerns about dangerous prescription practices at Kerry CAMHS in a protected disclosure in 2020.
Although she lost her job as a result and ended up homeless, Dr Sharma has been vindicated in two Health Service Executive reports and her actions have been praised by Government ministers.
Dr Sharma has also received a court payout from the HSE for being penalised for her whistleblowing.
In a harrowing interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday in April, Dr Sharma spoke of her experience of being homeless in London after her reputation as a whistleblower – and a negative HSE reference – scuppered her job prospects there.
Dr Sharma suffered a near-fatal assault and at one point resorted to sleeping at Heathrow airport.
Now she is set to return to private practice in Kerry where a meeting with the Taoiseach is expected to take place over the summer.
In a meeting between Mr Martin and mental health campaigner Davin Godfrey on Wednesday, the Taoiseach said he would be delighted to meet with Dr Sharma as he is scheduled to be in Kerry in the near future.
Last night the gesture was welcomed by Dr Sharma who is set to return to Killarney to begin treating patients in her new private practice in the coming weeks.
‘I would very much welcome the opportunity to meet the Taoiseach.
‘It would be a real honour,’ Dr Sharma told the MoS.
Dr Maya Sharma first raised concerns about dangerous prescription practices at Kerry CAMHS in a protected disclosure in 2020
In addition to Mr Godfrey and the Taoiseach, Wednesday’s meeting in Government Buildings was also attended by Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, Norma Foley, Kerry TD Michael Cahill and Kerry County Councillors Tommy Cahill and Jimmy Maloney.
After the meeting, which lasted an hour, Mr Godfrey said he felt he had moved a step closer to achieving his goal of a State apology for all CAMHS victims.
And he welcomed a commitment from Mr Martin that the Attorney General, Rossa Fanning, would now be asked to prepare the legal groundwork for any forthcoming formal apology.
Mr Godfrey said a formal State apology ‘would be recognition of the wrongdoings that everybody suffered over many years and the harm that was caused to us.’
‘It would also be an exoneration and a vindication of ourselves.
The Taoiseach said he would be delighted to meet with Dr Sharma as he is scheduled to be in Kerry in the near future
‘It would be an extraordinary weight lifted off our shoulders.’
Any apology however, cannot proceed until the second phase of a forthcoming report into North Kerry CAMHS is released early next year.
Mr Godfrey is one of hundreds of children who were harmed by horrific failures at Kerry CAMHS – which he discussed in an interview with the MoS three weeks ago.
Like many others, Mr Godfrey lost much of his childhood when the HSE and CAMHS prescribed dangerous, inappropriate and completely unnecessary drugs between the ages of seven and 19.
Rather than receiving the simple supports he needed for his autism as a child, Mr Godfrey was fed a bewildering mix of antipsychotic drugs, sedatives and other medications – none of which were based on any mental health diagnosis.
These drugs included Risperidrone and Quetiapine – powerful antipsychotics – as well as Sertraline – an antidepressant – and Olanzapine, used for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
He was also prescribed Benzodiazepines – to slow down the brain and nervous system – and Zopiclone, an insomnia medication.
‘I was having medications thrown at me left, right, and centre,’ Mr Godfrey said.
Campaigner Davin Godfrey is one of hundreds of children who were harmed by horrific failures at Kerry CAMHS
As a consequence of this cocktail of medicines he ballooned in weight and grew breasts as a teenager.
These later had to be surgically removed.
Now poised to begin a degree in law and politics as a mature student at the University of Limerick, Mr Godfrey has become a figurehead in the ongoing campaign seeking justice for all those affected by CAMHS.
He has compared his experience having multiple drugs forced on him as the equivalent of an assault.
‘Was that equivalent to an assault, under the Non Fatal Offences Against the Persons Act?
‘It was chemical restraint, chemical assault.
‘It’s poisoning. I couldn’t consent to it.
‘I didn’t consent to it and it was given to me against my will and I was poisoned.
‘I don’t know how I’m still here at 24 years of age.
‘I’m now fit and healthy and happy.
‘I never thought I’d see it, because I thought I’d be six feet under at 15 or 16.’
