Irish Mother and baby homes

Oh the ignorance.

Ask yourselves this, who are the real criminals? The men who got them pregnant and the families who abandoned them and cast them out. What relief would those women have had? would they have lived and died on the streets?

*Wow, someone clearly cannot read the room.

Today is about our collective shame. Please leave your ‘whataboutery’ at the door.

Do we excuse the Nazis by saying they found some great medical cures?*

I have no interest in reading the room. I am expressing my views. Some other person said my post was insensitive and they have reported me. This is beyond belief. Are free expression of views not allowed on mumset or are we all supposed to chant the lyrics of the Amen corner?

For information i have PERSONAL experience of such terrible homes where a young male child who could not be cared for by his single mother, as entrusted to the church. They brought him up from a baby to a young boy. One day a kindly couple came along and adopted him and gave him a new life. He grew up to be a successful member of society.

Of course bad things happened and there were undesirable outcomes. It happens everywhere. It happens today,right now.

If someone may be guilty of criminal offences, let the authority bring charges.

I confess I am not well enough informed about this latest revelation of atrocities coming from that direction so I'm about to go read up on it. It is a sad thing that this doesn't surprise me but just reading the posts I already know that reading it is something that will very much affect me emotionally - how could it not? I'll be following the links in this thread and am about to look up the book mentioned by MichelleofzeResistance if anyone else has recommendations on any other good sources of information it would be much appreciated.

Why is the report suggesting that there were up to 9,000 deaths when they acknowledge they've only reviewed 18 of c. 200 of these mother and baby homes? Surely that must be the tip of the iceberg.

I started reading the report yesterday and already I have found parts saying that there isn't evidence for or against physical abuse of women and children at these homes. Clearly the testimonies of hundreds of women is not considered enough.

It’s utterly horrific and shameful.

I’m Irish and was educated by nuns. As was my mother. My experience wasn’t bad but my mother was terrified of nuns even as an adult due to her experiences at school. Some of those nuns were total sadists. Send some of those sadists into positions where they feel morally superior to girls and women in mother and baby homes and you get horror.

The other thing worth mentioning is that even as late as the 1980s girls who got pregnant outside marriage were routinely described as having gotten themselves pregnant. Friends of my parents were disgusted that their son’s girlfriend had “gotten herself pregnant”. This was in 1981. They were further disgusted a few months later when my mother discovered I was on the pill and told them. My long term boyfriend and I got a lecture and I was told that they basically considered me a slut. They were also horrified that male friends of mine were routinely going into the Family Planning Clinic for condoms. My boyfriend pointed out that they were taking responsibility for their actions unlike some men. That went down like a lead balloon. Because it was always the woman’s fault.

I can only assume you posted that rubbish to cause controversy.

Having read Arnold’s posts on other threads it’s clear that women just aren’t people to him.

Yes, the death rates were far in excess of the death rates for infants and children in the general population.

Maybe they weren't "murdered" in the sense that someone put a pillow over their faces and suffocated them, but they were certainly unlawfully killed, by being denied enough food and timely medical care - actions which, were a company to carry them out (or fail to carry them out) would meet the threshold for corporate manslaughter.

The Catholic church needs to be held to account for this.

And as others have said, this wasn't years ago.

This was a period which overlaps my childhood we're talking about. At points the death rate in these institutions was up to 15% - even by the standards of the 60s and 70s, this would have been a national scandal had it been publicised at the time.

Also, the mortality rate for unmarried mothers and illegitimate children inside the homes was double that of the same demographic who were not in the homes. The great charitable support resulted in poorer outcomes than for those who were able to go it alone- not really what you would expect from somewhere that was dedicated to the accommodation of mothers and babies is it?

@Arnoldthecat have you read the report? Right at the outset it states "in the years before 1960 mother and baby homes did not save the lives of illegitimate children; in fact they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival". Does that not sound a bit deliberate to you? If not murder then at the least manslaughter.

There's a series on Al Jazeera called People and Power and they recently did 2 episodes about this. The homes received enough money to feed the babies but were withholding it so the babies were dying of malnourishment/starvation.

The death rate for babies in the mother and baby homes was extremely high even taking into account higher infant mortality rates that existed at the time. Some of the bodies uncovered at Tuam belonged to toddlers and children as old as 8 or 9. When you look at the records and recorded year of death there seemed to be gaps of time when no deaths occurred (up to a year in one case) and other times children seemed to be dying at a rate of one a day. There may be a rational explanation for this but I’ve yet to hear it. I don’t think genocide is too strong a word. The report confirms that the State new about the problems for years.
Women and children were treated as commodities. If the ‘perfect’ babies couldn’t be rehomed for a sizeable donation, they were put to work or cast aside. A lady spoke this morning on Radio Ulster and she described that because she had a boil on her mouth she wasn’t adopted. She compared herself to a puppy passed over because she was defective. However it meant that when her mother married she was able to come back for her when she was about two.

@Arnoldthecat I find your post insensitive, disturbing and offensive and I've reported it accordingly.

I can’t imagine any body defending these crimes

And I agree. There should be criminal prosecutions and also truth about the illegal adoptions

I read this morning that some of the girls were as young as 11. Heartbreaking that those girls had been raped (probably from a much younger age and by men who should have been protecting them) and then forced to go through that ordeal. Just babies themselves.

@Arnoldthecat... I think others have got there first.. yes anyone who was complicit in the failure to provide safety to those women and children should be prosecuted. They are guilty of misconduct and culpable manslaughter. These times were not ancient times, this was in my lifetime and my mothers.

Why was there shame? Because of the Catholic church.

Why were pregnant women hidden away? Because of the Catholic church.

You eejit.

@littlbrowndog. we have a man (Arnold) coming on here and claiming that crimes against women were undesirable outcomes and it’s ok because they had brainwashed the Irish people at the time to believe that they were the good guys. These men walk amongst us and actually have the arrogance to think that we should accept their bullshit rationale for why this really wasn’t a bad thing.

It is tragic that Ireland is again in the grip of a misogynistic belief system whose primary spokespeople are men and enforced by some women that refuses to accept others women’s autonomy and facts about themselves and treats them as sinners.

I listened to the Taoiseach’s apology yesterday and felt a rage that they have learnt nothing.

Undesirable outcomes ?

What a horrid and vile thing to say. Arnoldthecat

I can’t believe that someone would actually write that

I’ve done an advanced search and Arnold claims to be male on another thread. How fucking arrogant to come on this thread and spout the kind of bullshit justification that he has given as to why the Catholic Church was not guilty. Makes you question why he’s on this site at all when he obviously has so little regard for women.

I don't know as much about the mother and baby homes but I've read extensively about the Industrial School system that only fully closed in the late 1970s. Children there were beaten, raped, starved and denied knowledge of who they even were, then on their 16th birthday they were given a bus or train fare into town and thrown out. Literally the day that the state stopped providing money for their keep the 'charity' of the church stopped.

In the report, Bessborough mother and baby home had an infant mortality rate of 80% at one point. The babies only had their nappies changed at feeding time, and were left alone in filth for hours at a time. It was death by neglect, and even by the standards of the time, inspectors were horrified.

@Annasgirl. astonished that these apologists still exist and are actually stupid: unaware enough to post that crap excuse why what they did is only bad because it’s being judged against modern standards. Jimmy Saville did a lot of good work for charity - should he get a free pass for his other crimes.