Bickering continues over missing mental patient

The family of missing Pretoria psychiatric patient Shane Jordaan has been dismayed by claims that he had not been visited for at least seven years, vowing to prove that the most recent visit was in March last year.

This week, The Citizen reported that the Gauteng health department was told by the NGO running the state psychiatric centre in Cullinan, Tshwane, Jordaan was missing his parents.

Kairos Centre is run by an

NGO but funded by the Gauteng health department and licensed to provide services to 125 mental healthcare patients with severe psychiatric disabilities.

According to the health department, the NGO management reported that Jordaan, 30, had spoken about his parents frequently before his disappearance and that the centre had tried countless times to reach them.

Jordaan’s sister Christan said they had visited her younger brother every year and took a picture. She shared a picture of her dad posing with Shane at the centre in 2019, insisting that the last time the family saw her brother was just before the 2020 March hard Covid-19 lockdown.

“Kairos has never had a signing-in or singing-out [register] book. I have his medication administration schedule dated May 2021 to show that we have been involved,” Christan said.

However, Kairos manager Susan van Niekerk, who said she had cared for Shane for 11 years, said his parents only visited him once in 2015 and once in 2018. “It is here in our visitors’ register that the family claim we do not have… here we care for the most violent, mentally challenged people. Their families cannot cope with their violence and basic needs but us who clean up end up getting victimised… It is sad,” she said.

Van Niekerk said the facility had received a call from the Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital where Jordaan’s brother, Ruan, was admitted, complaining that he had not been visited.

“They said to us, ‘can we transfer him to your facility because his parents are not visiting him and he misses them, which affects him terribly in his mind’.”