Seven years after the heartbreak of burying her still-born son, Bernard, the Rotunda told Ellen Joyce that they had his organs

By Paul Neilan

A NAVAN woman had the organs of her still-born son taken without her knowledge and only found out seven years after his tragic death.

Ellen Joyce’s son Bernard passed away on August 14, 2002, due to physical trauma after a car crash in which Ellen and her now-separated husband suffered.

Around a week after the accident, a five-and-a-half month pregnant Ellen, then 24, was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, but the injuries proved too much for Bernard who sadly passed away.

The devastated 31-year-old is adamant that she never signed anything giving permission to the hospital to take Bernard’s organs and that she heard nothing about the matter until she received a letter from the Rotunda Hospital this year asking her to collect them.

She buried her beloved Bernard thinking him intact until the shocking contents of the letter were revealed.

“That was in August 2009. I nearly collapsed,” an emotional Ellen told The Post. “This caused so much hurt for me. I was never contacted about this until The Rotunda wrote me a letter but I was a patient with Drogheda.”

The horror at discovering that her child was buried without his brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and other vital organs came as a body blow to grieving Ellen, who had already suffered the loss of a son, Anthony, only a few years previous.

“As long as I have the power to speak, they are not getting away with this,” said a furious Ellen.

“I need justice for my baby. He had a traumatic death but the hospital say they have the right to do it.

“I was still in shock when I went to the Rotunda to collect Bernard’s organs.” Worse, however, was to follow when Ellen was presented with a tray displaying the child’s organs.

“They brought them out on a tray and started telling me which organ was which. The doctor was touching them with his finger when he was explaining and I asked him to stop, I told him I felt weak at the sight of what he was doing.

“Then he said that the organs were treated with the height of respect – I couldn’t believe that. ‘What height of respect?’ I asked. ‘You’re treating them like cat meat’ I said. For seven years they had them and I didn’t know?! There was no respect. It was horrendous and it’s caused me indescribable pain.”

Ellen took the organs in a casket and buried them in a separate but equally painful ceremony at St Mary’s, Navan, but bravely she wants to highlight her plight so that others won’t have to suffer her ordeal.

“I want to make parents aware of what can happen. This is a terrible situation and I want to make sure that people know about this.”

Ellen is determined to get to the bottom of why the Rotunda had her son’s organs and why it took them seven years to inform her – she is taking legal advise and has written to the hospital for an explanation.

“I want the Rotunda to acknowledge what they did and why it took seven years. I don’t want this to happen to anybody ever again,” she said.

While it does not explain why it took seven years to tell Ellen, a HSE spokesperson for the North East said that when a post-mortem is ordered by the coroner, consent is not needed from the parents and that it is not uncommon for that inquest to be held in another hospital.

There was no-one available from the Rotunda to comment at the time of going to press.