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A FORMER SCHOOL principal, who stole nearly €100,000 to fuel a “severe” gambling addiction, had a 20-month sentence suspended by a judge last week.
During the sentencing, judge Tom O’Donnell said that gambling addictions destroy lives and have a “catastrophic impact” on the lives of those around the person with the gambling problem.
The trial heard that 43-year-old, father of three, Stephen Condon’s life fell apart due to a crippling gambling addiction.
The judge acknowledged that Condon, who had “risen through the ranks” of the Limerick school, had a “fall from grace” and had “devastated his family dynamics” as a result of the addiction.
Such devastation is unfortunately common, with one expert telling The Journal that it is the “hidden side” of gambling addiction.
Dr Crystal Fulton, an associate professor in University College Dublin who published a study on the social impact of gambling in 2015, explained: “There’s a second side to [gambling addiction] – the families are the hidden victims of this problem.”
Dr Fulton said that there are very few services in Ireland for the support of family members who are impacted by another person’s addictions.
One of them is the Rise foundation, its CEO is the Senator Frances Black.
“We at the Rise Foundation believe that when someone is in addiction, whether it be alcohol, drugs, gambling – whatever it might be – the family members need to step into their own separate recovery,” she told The Journal.
Black said that any type of addiction impacts the entire family “in a devastating way”.
From her study, Dr Fulton said that families felt they were not “included” in the recovery process and that they had to deal with the “shock” of the addiction by themselves.
Black said that the need for family members to “step into their own recovery” is important as they “still need to find ways to deal with the stress, the anxiety, the worry, the trauma and it’s important that they try and learn how to cope”.
In the Limerick case this week, the court heard about a marital breakdown and how family savings were used for gambling.
Dr Fulton’s study, Playing Social Roulette, found that trust among family members and the person with gambling problems would sever and the family as a unit were “almost always in crisis”.
Dr Fulton said: “If a couple can stay together, they’re very fortunate.
“You will often see this kind-of break down in relationships and families, and it’s because there’s a complete breach of trust.”
Black said: “Gambling addiction has so much secrecy behind it.
“A lot of the time the family members aren’t aware of it until there’s a huge debt and all of a sudden the person who has the problem has to tell the family or someone is calling to the house looking for money,” Black added.
In most cases, according to the study, trust among the family unit is “non-existent” even after the person is in recovery or has surpassed their exclusion period – a common form of detoxing among problem gamblers.
“When the family finds out that someone has a gambling problem, it’s soul destroying,” the senator said.
Black told The Journal that it takes a “long, long time” for trust between someone with a gambling problem and their family is revived.
The Senator added that the family member can heal by going through their own recovery and learning how to “let go and pull back”.
The UCD professor told The Journal that many family members who were interviewed in her study were “holding on to what they could” to save their relationships.
“I had a father tell me about his son [...] But you could just see that the trust was gone forever. They loved their son, but you couldn’t leave a purse or some loose change out – you couldn’t leave anything like that out,” Dr Fulton said.
“They had to change their lives because of what gambling addiction had done.”
Black said that family members will often attempt to hide and manage money through certain ways where the person with the gambling addiction will not be able to have access to it.
However, Black added that controlling money in the home is very difficult to do as the person with a gambling problem can find other means of obtaining enough money to gamble with.
The UCD study found that it was not uncommon for the family to continue to hold a stigma against the member of the family who problem gambles for a long period of time after.
Additionally, family and friends told the researchers that people with gambling problems will isolate themselves from the unit and were frequently “spaced out”.
Black said: “If you have alcohol or drugs, you’re more inclined to see if the person is stoned or drunk – but with gambling it’s just surrounded by secrecy and hiding.”
Dr Fulton said that the people with gambling problems she spoke to in her study would speak about the difficulties they had whilst attempting to address the issue.
Black said: “For a family to watch their loved one going down that self-destruct route, it’s really heartbreaking – it’s not just about isolation, it’s everything.”
Black said for families who see this happen it can be “form of grief” as they see someone “going down this really dark road”.
The senator said that “powerlessness” families feel when they see someone with an addiction issue is what she thinks has the largest impact on the family unit.
Regulation
Regulation which will attempt to bring in measures to make it harder for people from developing gambling addictions are set to be introduced by this year, according to junior Minister for Justice James Browne.
Browne said last week that planning is “progressing” to introduce the Gambling Regulation Bill and that the newly formed Gambling Regulation Authority has been in contact with stakeholders, including “gambling care experts”.
The Health Research Board estimates, in their most up-to-date research, that there are 12,000 high-risk problem gamblers and 35,000 moderate risk gamblers in Ireland.
As Judge O’Donnell said in court this week: “Unfortunately this court has seen the fallout from people’s addictions, whether it is drugs, alcohol or, in this case, gambling, which destroys their lives, and has catastrophic impact on the lives of those closest to them”.
If you or someone you know needs help with dealing with gambling, you can get help and support now by sending a text to Extern Problem Gambling on 089 241 5401 (ROI) or 07537142265 (NI). For more details, please visit: https://www.problemgambling.ie/
Additional reporting by David Raleigh
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The article speaks for the direct professional competence and experience of the author.
As a contrast, our newly appointed Taoiseach has frequently disputed the correlation between poverty and ill health and premature mortality. Despite the fact that Veradker is a qualified medical practitioner, his political ideology that poverty is not a concern of government, blinds him to the hugely detrimental impact of poverty on human health.
Diets in poorer area plays a bugger role in life expectancy….
@Paul: When we see that obesity if a factor in First World “poverty” we should wake up and see that PC fake analyse is keeping the poor, poor. Certain political parties need to keep a pool of poor people as voters to get themselves elected and these are the real enemies of the poor.
The private practice model of GP healthcare is not financially viable in poorer areas. Timely Access to GPs is more restricted in the case of poorer people than for those who are more comfortably off.
@Jenny mcCarty: You can qualify that statement, I assuming.
@Tony Daly: quiet the opposite. Workers have to arrange time off work to visit GP and pay 50 to 65€ as they don’t have medical cards.
@Geraoid O’Helidhe: Great, all workers should have them and the public housing close to jobs if required.
Well done for highlighting health inequalities. Not new but larger ignored in ireland.
See the Black Report – very old doc now
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/XXMM-JMQU-2A7Y-HX1E?journalCode=joha
Also this affects everyone to some degree as there is a social gradient.
It’s all about choices….
@Gavin Huban: To an extent it is but you have less choices to make or certain choices have a higher cost as a proportion of your income. To eat healthier might be very difficult to afford or even get depending on where you live.
Slightly off topic but one glaring indictment of our health service is that even for private patients, waiting times are only “a matter of month”.
In this country we have now a new norm of having to wait months even privately except where you are a Minister or politician.
@Ger Healy: I completely agree. There is something to be said for a competitive American model of medicine where doctors decide to help people, make money because of their qualifications and expertise, and not be grossly overworked. When I have had to see a specialist, after waiting a very long time for the appointment, I wonder about the waiting list of people behind me and how that must affect the health of the doctor being put under so much pressure day in and day out.
@Ger Healy: The narrative that people are definitely corrupt if they are politicians is wrong and threatens democracy and is similar to the widely held belief that all media are liars.
Put it this way…………………….have you ever seen a bookie riding a bicycle?Go figure!
@Jenny mcCarty: Have you ever asked yourself why you need these gross simplifications, Jenny? I pay a mortgage and work, but I acknowledge this as good fortune, as well as the work ethic and attitude I was lucky enough to inherit – in the long run I’m far better off in all respects. Stop whining – you may need to see the world in such simple terms because you are frightened by its complex problems and just want it to go away. For you and all of us it will, eventually, and this will have been your life – is this the best you can do?
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