Espadas, Alienígenas e um Cão chamado Deus


Um caso de insanidade mal diagnosticada resultou naquilo que parece uma piada de mau gosto, mas que infelizmente, não é. Com detalhes a roçar as mais escabrosas cenas medievais, este é um caso triste e preocupante.
Nas palavras do meu homónimo, talvez o mal não seja a concepção que fazemos dele, mas simplesmente algo que deixa de funcionar correctamente de um momento para o outro, e entra em completa contrariedade ou falta de sintonia com a Natureza...



When Bill McGarrity killed four-year-old Jessica Gallagher with a sword in January 2000, he believed she was an alien possessed by an evil spirit. He was sure his dog, God, would lick her back to life.

Now his sister, Tracy Russell, has spoken about the family's struggle to get him treated in the months before the killing.

"My brother didn't get the help he asked for, we asked for," she tells tonight's A Current Affair on Channel Nine.

The details of Jessica Gallagher's last few hours are horrific. So is the manner of her mother Carmel Angiletta's torture and rape. She was McGarrity's de facto partner.

But there is compelling evidence that McGarrity should have been taken into psychiatric care long before the murder.


Two days before the killing, he was visited by an acute care team, who concluded that he showed no signs or symptoms of mental illness. He was later found not guilty of murder because he was mentally ill at the time of the offence.

"He was just so obviously sick," Ms Russell said. "I really can't understand why they didn't listen to us, especially with such a long history and someone begging for help, and the incidents involved."

Ms Russell and her brother had urged the mental health team to admit McGarrity as an involuntary patient.

Carmel Angiletta's sister, Gabi Virtu, also begged for McGarrity to be taken into hospital, because she was worried about Jessica. "They were my last hope," she said. "I just didn't know what to do after that."

Ms Virtu and her mother repeatedly approached the Department of Community Services to remove Jessica from the house in San Remo, on the Central Coast.

Bill McGarrity had an 11-year history of mental illness, dating from his first admission to Gosford Hospital's Mandala Clinic in 1989, when he was diagnosed as suffering from schizo-affective disorder. He was back in 1991 after attempting suicide, and in 1996, when he was convinced he was Jesus.

He was admitted a fourth time in August 1999, and again in October 1999, just 10 weeks before Jessica's death. This time he fled after 10 days, despite a magistrate's order that he be treated for three weeks. Yet the hospital did not attempt to bring him back.

When Ms Russell asked for him to be readmitted, she was told there were no beds.

During his October 1999 stay in Mandala, McGarrity assaulted a patient and was violent towards staff. According to Ms Russell, he was smoking a lot of cannabis and had become "scary" and "obviously delusional".

"He would get angry if you interrupted," she said. "He would get angry because he was the Messiah."

The McGarrity case is one of six deaths where the killer had recently been released from psychiatric care. People harming themselves after release is even more common. Typically, shortage of beds is blamed.

"They simply don't get the care they need," said Dr Brian Pezzutti, who chaired the recent Legislative Council inquiry into the state's mental health services.

"NSW mental health funding is appallingly low by national and certainly international standards," he said. "And it's a diabolical reflection on us as a society that we have simply closed our minds to the biggest single epidemic of illness in NSW."

Neither the NSW Minister for Health, Morris Iemma, nor his chief mental health bureaucrat, Beverley Raphael, would comment on Jessica's death.

An inquest in August will examine the alleged systemic failure

in - The Sidney Morinig Herald, by Paul Barry - 18-06-2003




Abraço arrepiado e triste