Belfast woman Meabh Quoirin, whose daughter Nóra died in mysterious circumstances in Malaysia four years ago, said the most shocking and painful part of a documentary on her death was the showing of the young girl’s body.
The documentary, on Malaysian television last week, was broadcast without the parents being informed it was even being made. It came as a “real shock”, Ms Quoirin said.
Ms Quoirin said she and her husband Sebastien were taken aback by footage of the family, including Nora’s funeral, which took place at St Brigid’s Church in south Belfast, the church where she was baptised.
“They showed a lot of personal material,” Ms Quoirin told RTÉ.
“Perhaps the most shocking and painful of all was that they actually showed pictures of Nora’s body when they found her,” she said.
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“Blurred to an extent, but I can’t really put into words the pain and anxiety that floods your body when you see a picture of your little girl like that on national television.”
The 15-year-old went missing from a resort on a family holiday in Malaysia in August, 2019. Her body was found 10 days later.
Her parents believe the teenager, born with a rare genetic that meant she lived with cognitive difficulties, was abducted. Malaysian police investigated as a missing person case.
An initial inquest recorded a death but misadventure but a second returned an open verdict with the possibility there was foul play.
“It came as a real shock,” she said of the documentary broadcast on Malaysia’s TV3.
“Shocking in a number of different ways. The quality of the programme is pretty bad, in that it was a narration of what the police had endeavoured to carry out at the time. It was really a story about them, for them, by them.
“No critical questions were asked, no investigative points were raised. So from that point of view it was very poor and frustrating.”
She told RTÉ's Brendan O’Connor: “We had to fight quite hard to secure an inquest initially and that first inquest led to a verdict of misadventure.
“We fought that and secured an appeal and the judge that was appointed pretty much articulated it quite well for us at the time, that it was highly improbable that Nóra wandered off into the jungle in treacherous terrain.”
She added that the documentary was made almost exclusively from the police’s point of view.
Ms Quoirin said that keeping Nóra’s memory alive was “super important”, adding the documentary heightens their anxiety “in that space”.
“Four years on, I think it is more about being there to honour the truth and to share the love we had with Nóra,” she said.
“It was such a privilege to have her as our daughter and that is what we try to focus on every day.”