Kerry babies & Ann Lovett case

[GeorgieBoy95]

I've been reading a lot about these two cases lately.

I never knew that this story relates to the third pregnancy of Joanne Hayes - she had a toddler who lived in the family home and had also had a late miscarriage. In this pregnancy she laboured in a field thirty yards from the house during the night - when the baby was stillborn she wrapped him in plastic and placed the bundle into a ditch. Where was the compassion for this poor woman and the baby? Was it her own shame that drove her out into the darkness to have the baby? Did the family make her leave the house to have the baby? It is all so terribly sad.

Also, the poor baby who washed up in Cahircivern had lived for 3 to 5 days and had then been stabbed 28 times.... Someone (and perhaps more than one) knows who this baby is - that person must have lived their life with that knowledge, knowing that the Hayes family had been drawn into it unfairly.

I also didn't know that Ann Lovett was one of eight siblings. Surely in a big family her pregnancy would have been noticed? She was in school that morning - did the teachers really not notice?! I was so utterly naive at 15 - I can't begin to imagine what that poor girl went through.

This was 1984. I would have been seven at the time. I am so thankful that Ireland has changed hugely since then.

I’m in NI but had never heard of these girls and babies until this thread. How heartbreaking. And of course there were all the girls and women and babies we never heard about. My friend got pregnant whilst away at university in 1995 and came back home to Ireland 6 months pregnant. Her mother wouldn’t acknowledge her and her father informed her she would be going away to have the baby and have it adopted. They told people she was working in Dublin. She was sent to a mother and baby Home and had her son but the day she was to give him over she changed her mind and just grabbed him and left. She went home and thank goodness her father talked her mother in to letting her stay. Baby’s father was nowhere to be seen so no help there. She still feels incredible guilt about doing that to her family. Her mum really struggled with what everyone would think and what she would tell people. That’s only 23 years ago.

@HildaZelda
I was 9 at the time
And I recall it from the time it happened as opposed to the time since.
Perhaps 4 was too young to recall an immediate recollection. However, anyone with a titter of wit would have been aware of these cases in the 10 years (at least) after it happened. It was mentioned a lot and referenced in media frequently.

I have definite memories of newspaper articles at the time mentioning a boyfriend in the army.

I stand corrected on the part about her father being a widower.
www.irishtimes.com/polopoly_fs/1.1673916.1391100595!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_620_330/image.jpg

I'm 4 years younger than Leo Varadkar & Kerry Babies was often mentioned in our house although my dm hails from there

Did they exhume the baby's body from the Hayes farm ?

@justforthisnow, ah okay, 9 is a bit different. I was 9 when the Berlin wall came down and can remember it clearly, but have no clear memories of news events at 4.

Are women treated any better in Ireland today though?

Well yeah, of course they are. Even just regarding the "unmarried mother" stigma as it was in the 70s-80s, it is no longer a cultural norm in wider society - many couples have children while living together rather than being married, single mothers aren't pressured to give their babies up for adoption, and teenage girls aren't habitually told that they'll be thrown out if they come home pregnant. Let's not forget how far we've come.

Of course, there are still plenty of things to be addressed. The 8th amendment. Domestic abuse. The gender pay gap. Take your pick... But it's defeatist and insulting to campaigners over the years to say things are as bad for women now as they were then.

Things are better. Let's make them better again.

Google "I am an Irishman" by Aodhan O Riordain, powerful speech about repealing the 8th.

I’ve just read about both of these cases after this thread came up on Active. Just appalling.

Really shocking. I was born in 1976 so only have vague memories of this.
Teenage pregnancies were a big no no when I was in school. Out of 80 of us about 15 were pregnant living school or soon after.
Huge scandal but nobody was going to go to the local gp for birth control or the pharmacy for condoms.
One girl hid her pregnancy till nearly full term wearing a trench coat in summertime.
The church had such a hold of people even then.

I was born in 86 so obviously don't remember it from the time, but I only heard about both cases relatively recently. I think after looking up the Christy Moore song about Ann Lovett.
I do think things have changed to an extent, two girls in my year got pregnant at around 16/17 - although I don't think either father was involved and at least one denied it all ways.
And, realistically, it's much easier nowadays to get a flight over and back to England, or order pills or, presumably to get the morning after pill. (I've only ever got it when living in England so I don't actually know how easy it is to get in rural Ireland.)

There seems to be a lot of assumption that Baby John was the product of an unwed mother though - is that just because the Gardai pinned it on Joanne Heyes for so long? Really we don't know anything about that baby or his murder. It's too simplistic to say that if times were different or abortion was legal or Irish people weren't such cunts to unwed mothers that he would still be alive.

Baby John could have been the result of rape or incest. There's now a lot of speculation that the gardai know something are are trying to smoke out someone who knows something about his birth and death.

The timing is dubious especially with what's going on with the McCabe thing at the moment.

Aw what a sad thread. I too knew nothing until I read it. My Grandmother born in 1917 got pregnant to an american airman at the end of the war . The baby was given up for adoption in belfast and adopted to the south . The family was not good. The father abused the child and she was returned to the care of the magdalene sisters to run away at 16 and make a life for herself in England . We found out after Grandmother died and we have contact. I am glad thta times have changed but we are still held back by archaic laws both north and south.

I'm about the same age as Anne Lovett. I was in secondary school at the time of her death and we discussed the case a lot among ourselves and in class.
Our religion teacher said it would have never happened in Dublin. (where I lived) because Dublin people were more open minded.
I'm not sure if that was true.
Someone up thread said that things changed a lot from 85-95. So true. Anne Lovett and Joanne Hayes had a lot to do with that.
Such a terrible sad story.

@7Days

Nell McCafferty wrote the definitive account of the case and tribunal, it's available in Amazon:

www.corkuniversitypress.com/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=9781855942134

I never read anything about Ann Lovett having a boyfriend, in the army or otherwise, and I think her sister killing herself a couple of months later gives credence to the rumour that the Ann's baby was a result of incest.

I think it's also worth noting, for those who have any knowledge of small town Ireland, than not a single Mass was ever said for her, not even a Months Mind.

By the by, I was reminded yesterday that the treatment of Joanne Hayes caused so much outrage, that she was sent flowers on every day of the tribunal; a single yellow rose, timed to arrive just as the afternoon news was starting, so she would be filmed receiving it.

The same thing has been organised for the current high profile rape victim in the North. the Just Giving page (?, it might be one of the other crowd funding sites) is sitting at just under €3k. The remainder of the fund will be donated to Belfast Rape Crisis.

Sadly, babies were buried in fields and the burial places were known as "liosins"( pronounced "lisheens") I understand that the practice was used when an illegitimate child was born. The Church would not baptise them, and the families didn't want to be reminded of their existence, so it was the way such " problems" were dealt with.
I'm talking about the last century, probably early 1900s
The elders of the villages were in the know about where the liosins were situated, and it's believed that The Church were aware of the practice.

I'll get that book Silently - I know a bit about this but not enough. I worked on a book with a woman (I'm a ghostwriter) whose granny had three pregnancies before she was 20, all to married men in her community, all of whom were taken away from her and never heard of again. She was treated like dirt. This was rural Scotland - appalling and heartbreaking.

After Ann Lovett's death there was a massive outpouring of stories from women who had become pregnant while single, some of them are published here but I warn you, some make for very hard reading:

www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/the-ann-lovett-letters-sorrow-shame-anger-and-indignation-1.1673920#.WnN---BCAVZ.facebook

123Mother That's not really true, or representative, about babies' burial grounds.

A person had to be baptised to be buried in a consecrated burial ground, such as a catholic graveyard. Babies that were stillborn or died unbaptised - legitimate or not - couldn't be buried in a catholic cemetery. The usual practice was to have a separate children's burial ground on unconsecrated ground. These weren't hidden places - everyone knew where they were - and would sometimes be located in a corner of the graveyard (within the walls but unconsecrated), against the outside of the cemetery wall, or sometimes in a different place entirely like on the top of a hill. (A liosín just means a small stone structure, and refers to a ring fort more often than a burial place). These children's burial grounds were in use from at least the 18th century until the 20th century when secular municipal cemeteries were created around the country.

Illegitimate children were almost always baptised, though you might have got individual priests on a moral crusade who refused to do it. They weren't buried in random fields as a matter of course.

There was a Liosin next to our village in Galway. My Dad said you could spot them as trees were usually planted to make the ground unsuitable for planting or farming.
It was a creepy spot, Woody and shady and when the wind blew through the branches we thought the sound it made was the souls of the unbaptised babies crying for our prayers.

I think liosín might be a Conamara term. I've heard them called cillín in the south, and just children's burial ground in the midlands.

They weren't just for children, of course. Suicides, any strangers who died in the area whose religion was unknown (ie: not definite catholics), hanged criminals, etc. all were denied consecrated ground and buried there.

A lot of them are being lost to memory now as the older folk of the community die and the younger have never seen them used.

Baby John's DNA has been sent to the UK to try and trace his family, even if it's very far out cousins which will hopefully help the gardai trace his parents.

not a single Mass was ever said for her, not even a Months Mind

That is desperately sad and such a mark of disrespect, but normally months minds are organised and paid for by the family, I wonder did the father just want the publicity to go away? For whatever reason.

The unconsecrated graveyard near my Grannys in Galway was recently blessed I think, or certainly acknowledged. I don't know if or where there would be one in my home town, although im sure there must be one, which makes it all the sadder.

Baby John's DNA has been sent to the UK to try and trace his family, even if it's very far out cousins which will hopefully help the gardai trace his parents.

I hope not. Even if Baby John was murdered and there is at least one pathologists who believes the injuries on his body were cause by a gull, I think that too much time has passed to punish anyone. At worse a desperate act was carried out in a desperately unforgiving time. I can't feel anything but pity for the woman involved.