She’d had enough of life, I was just trying to help her
Gail O’Rorke speaks out after assisted suicide trial
GAIL O’Rorke has spoken about the moment two gardaí approached her as she was about to book flights to Switzerland so friend Bernadette Forde could end her life.
Ms O’Rorke’s landmark legal trial saw her face two charges of assisting a suicide and one charge of attempting to assist a suicide.
She was acquitted and is now hoping her ordeal and that of Ms Forde will not be in vain, and that laws around assisted suicide will change.
‘Change would mean that people could pass peacefully, and that they would have better structure to the decision that they make,’ she said.
Ms O’Rorke said that she saw the day she went to a travel agency in 2011 to book the two tickets as helping a friend in desperate need. Ms Forde had been diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis in 2000 and the disease had worsened over time leaving her able to do ‘very little for herself’.
But the travel agency alerted gardaí, and Ms O’Rorke said two officers strongly advised her against travelling to Zurich because it would be seen as a criminal offence.
She said: ‘We really had no idea that what we were doing might be illegal here. We just assumed it was okay as it was legal in Switzerland.
‘Bernadette absolutely fell apart when I came back [from the Garda station] to tell her what had happened, but she was determined.’
Ms O’Rorke also said Ms Forde was prepared for the trip to Dignitas and had written letters to her loved ones. Speaking to The Sunday Business Post, she said: ‘Towards the end Bernadette could do very little for herself. She could not look after her own personal care or toileting. Breathing had become difficult for her and it was getting harder for her to swallow. She didn’t want to stay trapped in her body any longer. She had had enough. She didn’t want to die, but she couldn’t live the way she wanted to.
‘She wasn’t afraid of death. She was a spiritual person and she adored her dad. She believed her dad was waiting for her, and she couldn’t wait to see him again.’ A fortnight after Ms O’Rorke was prevented from booking the flights, Ms Forde bought drugs which would end her life.
They had first met in 1998, when Ms O’Rorke was employed by an agency that cleaned Ms Forde’s house. She then began working as a taxi driver, but continued her cleaning job and a friendship grew.
Ms Forde’s condition deteriorated in 2008 after a car crash that left her in hospital for months and unable to walk again. Afterwards Ms Forde began to talk about her suicidal intentions, according to Ms O’Rorke. She told the newspaper: ‘The discomfort from her MS increased. The pain in her legs became excruciating. She became weaker and weaker. She was desperately trying to hold on to her dignity, but it was slipping
‘She wasn’t afraid of death’
through her fingers, and quickly.’
Ms O’Rorke said her friend didn’t want to live out the rest of her life in a care home. Ms Forde’s body was discovered by gardaí in her apartment in Morehampton Road in Dublin 4 on June 5, 2011, and the coroner gave the cause of death as barbiturate toxicity. She had recorded a message trying to absolve Ms O’Rorke of any conspiracy.
‘When Bernadette was making her plans, we all agreed that we would not say who was with her at the end,’ Ms O’Rorke said. ‘We wanted to respect her because she was willing to make that ultimate sacrifice, but then it got serious and I couldn’t continue with that lie. I knew it was time to tell the truth.’
Ms O’Rorke, who was charged with assisting her friend’s suicide, said she would have preferred to have served five years in prison than for people to think she was a bad person. She was especially worried when she heard that Ms Forde had left her 30 per cent of her estate in her will.
‘In Bernadette’s suicide message, which was played in court, she said she wanted to give money to the people who had made a difference in her life and that was Catriona [her niece] and myself. But she put me in a position, unbeknownst to myself, that I was going to gain financially. She wasn’t thinking. But for two years, I thought that was going to be top of the list of accusations. It was a lovely gesture, but God, did it cause me sleepless nights.’
In the first prosecution of its kind in Ireland, Ms O’Rorke was charged with three counts under the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act. She told gardaí that Ms Forde had got her to send €400 via Western Union to a man in Mexico. She told the court that Ms Forde later told her the money was for the drug which she planned to use to end her life.
Two weeks ago Judge Patrick McCartan directed that she be found not guilty of two of the three charges. She remained accused of attempting to help Ms Forde travel to Zurich, which she denied. She was acquitted last Tuesday.