The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the Hungarian state failed to prevent the avoidable death of a vulnerable adult in the care of the Order of Malta’s Hungarian branch.
The judgement issued on 10 October considered breach of Article 2 (the Right to Life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The late “T.J.” (whose identity is protected by court order), a woman with profound learning disabilities, had resided in the Topház care home at Göd in northern Hungary from the age of 10. She died of pneumonia in hospital aged 45 on 25 August 2018. However, the ECtHR found she had not simply died by natural causes.
In its judgement the court ruled that Ms. T.J.’s death had to be understood within a context “characterised by a disregard for her state of health, her medical needs and the needs resulting from her disability”.
Her ill treatment had over time included use of prolonged and inappropriate physical restraint and the decision to feed her only with baby formula, leaving her “severely malnourished”.
Conditions at the home were first exposed in spring 2017, in a report from the disability rights NGO the Validity Foundation. The ensuing scandal led eventually to the removal of the home’s director and the transfer of the institution from government to church control.
In March this year, a Hungarian court ruled that some practices at the home had amounted to torture as defined in international law.
The ECtHR judgement referred to Ms. T.J. having been “under the exclusive control of the state”. However according to Validity’s director Steven Allen, this did not mean the state was responsible for day-to-day management or care but rather “means being under the authority of a state appointed guardian”.
During Ms. T.J.’s last six weeks at the home it was instead run by the Charitable Service of the Order of Malta in Hungary (CSOMH), which took over the operation of the former Göd-Topház facility (now renamed “House of Providence”) from state authorities on 1 July 2018. Ms T.J. was resident in the facility until her hospitalisation with pneumonia on 17 August.
The facility’s condition during those week’s is unknown, as the CSOMH did not allow Validity or other NGOs to inspect it after it assumed management, and have reportedly continued to deny them access.
There were also concerns about the access Ms T.J.’s legal guardian – identified as “K” – had to her in the weeks before her death. The ECtHR judgement referred to K’s testimony to the Budapest district court on 12 January 2023, that she “visited the institution once a month and spent about an hour there each time”.
The judgment said K also represented 27 residents “with whom she had been unable to communicate”.
The CSOMH did not respond to a request for comment.
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