Irish Mother and baby homes

[Colouringaddict]

Finally today a five year report has been released. 9,000 babies dying and being placed in a mass grave sparked the investigation.

Decades of suffering for thousands of families.

The church will be asked to contribute to the restorative justice for the victims. Despite the fact that there was no evidence of the church forcing the women into these homes ( and we all know that isn’t true).

The Irish P.M will also issue an apology.

It isn’t enough is it?

This report covers right up to 1998, so it’s hardly historical in its totality!

just been reading about it. Absolutely heartbreaking

I dont know what would be enough to make up for that

That is horrific.
I'm glad to hear the children's minister specifically mentioned unmarried mothers faced a brutally misogynistic culture.
From society and the church.

15% baby mortality rate in those homes.

And no, nothing can be enough to make up for that.
The numbers are hideous.

It isn’t enough is it?
No, but then I’m not sure what would be enough to be honest. 1 in 7 babies died, and yes, that it covers up to 1998 is unfathomable.

How could so many babies die without being helped on that road.
Children don't randomly die for no reason.

Is there a link to the report?

It's horrific. I read Alison o'Reilly's book on how this case was dragged, slowly and painfully into the light by the families, fought every step of the way. At the end is a list of the children's names, ages and registered dates of death, and when you read it, not only was it not uncommon for more than one child to die a day, you can also find waves of time where children died like flies and other times where for months, at one point more than a year, no child died at all. It raises questions on who the hell was working there at what times and what the hell went on, because I'd swear there were untold stories there. Anything could have been happening on those wards and no one would have cared, inspectors went in and noted all this, and their reports weren't acted on.

Several really crucial historical notes here.

• That information was actively suppressed, wrong doing concealed, atrocities looked away from, because of politically sensitive ground and special people with special rules being involved. Women and children were harmed in this agenda in full sight and knowledge for the 'greater good' as it was seen at the time.

• That these women were deemed to have sinned against society and this wholly justified the way they were treated and what was done to them. Because of fixed, extreme beliefs, it was viewed as not only appropriate but good to punish, harm and withdraw rights from women who had failed to fit in with the good girl system.

• Misogyny. Absolute drenching in misogyny.

The wider lessons of this need rubbing all over the faces of every current serving politician and LA department. In detail. It's not enough to say gosh how shocking/sad and look away.

Warning here as this is distressing stuff, but I strongly recommend looking at that long list of names of those kids, who ended up unwrapped, carried down a garden and put in an old septic tank. The archaologists who went to look at this when it was discovered had a hell of a job sorting the bones of one kid from another as they'd just been piled. Every one of those kids had a mother who suffered along with them, most of whom never knew what happened to their child. This happened in the UK and in living memory. To paraphrase the words of Georgette Heyer, this is something that should be discussed in every woman's home.

Utterly heartbreaking.

State and church sanctioned brutality to women/girls and babies.

Remember the evils that can be perpetrated in the supposed name of righteousness.

As a lapsed Irish Catholic - I do think this living history and atoning for sins is part of the reason for the unquestioning adoption of self ID in Ireland and in particular, why many women support it.

Michelle - your reference to how babies were buried underlines the utter callous and cruel hypocrisy of this system.

Warning - but I would also urge everyone to look up Symphysiotomy and Ireland as a method of childbirth.

Irish women still bleed due to the needless cruelties enacted upon them.

assets.gov.ie/118565/107bab7e-45aa-4124-95fd-1460893dbb43.pdf

The above is the link to the report

Uppity I will look that up, thank you.

Also important to note: these are not just tiny babies. Off the top of my head the oldest child buried in that tank was something like 9 years old.

Many, many of them were preschool and primary aged children who died on those wards, not just infants in the first weeks of life.

The women who had sinned were sometimes (possibly quite often in rural areas) pregnant due to forced incest.

Heart breaking. Really really the way women and girls and their babies were treated

Then the covering up

Same as sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

Covered up for decades

State and church sanctioned cruelty to women and children. I think I will need a very large drink to read that report, I just cried at the write up in The Independent. Honestly I don't know if the Ireland of today is any less cruel to women.

I just want to add that while the church and state were party to this, families turned on their own - it was only allowed because it suited the majority of people (men and women) who lived in Ireland. Let us not kid ourselves that it was the evil Church and the evil state - we were the Church and we were the State. I am Irish, formerly Catholic, involved in women's rights and politics all of my life.

My mother remembered all of this and agreed that they all knew "what happened to the bad girls" - in other words it was used as a form of control of women and girls - not of men of course, because if a DNA test was carried out on the bodies of all the dead, well, there would be some tales to tell.

Some families stood up against it - I remember an old woman when I was a child, and she was a mother to a late middle aged man who lived with her and she had never married, but she had never entered a home nor had she had her son taken form her (for context, he would have been born sometime in the 1940's).

Closer to home, some family members were adopted and the story of their birth mother is similar to those of many women who were forced by family into these mother and baby homes - and these adoptions happened in the 1970's.

It is a tragedy, and we need to look at it the same way as German people look at the Holocaust - accept that we did it, and we were all part of it, and it was wrong.

Finally, I want to add that I am disgusted that Colm O'Gorman and Orla O'Connor can be quoted about this report ,when they are currently in the process of denying that women exist - when this was all 100% because of biology and not a "feeling" or a "social construct".

Terribly sad times.

"Some families stood up against it - I remember an old woman when I was a child, and she was a mother to a late middle aged man who lived with her and she had never married, but she had never entered a home nor had she had her son taken form her (for context, he would have been born sometime in the 1940's)."

This was true. I know a woman now in her 80's, who was" illegitimate" but was raised with her extended family. So yes, some families did not abandon their pregnant daughters. I also remember reading of a young woman who was pregnant and remained with her family but was turned away from 2 hospitals, when in labour, due to her being unmarried. She died.
www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30862904.html

Also important from a feminist pov to hold in mind that this was a patriarchial system, by male people for the benefit of male people - however there were no males maltreating those women or presiding over the wards where those children died.

Zeal, ideological fervour, feelings of own superiority and virtue looking down on others - while shouting wholly cognitive dissonant stuff about loving fellow man - meeting own needs by exercising power over others, gaining status, cruelty and inhumanity from women to women and children, a belief in an important role for self in exorcising and punishing evils - that's something that needs unpacking, because that hasn't passed on either.

@Annasgirl
I had the same thoughts when I saw Roderic on the news. His remarks on misogyny were clearly lacking any sense of self awareness

@MichelleofzeResistance

Also important from a feminist pov to hold in mind that this was a patriarchial system, by male people for the benefit of male people - however there were no males maltreating those women or presiding over the wards where those children died.

Zeal, ideological fervour, feelings of own superiority and virtue looking down on others - while shouting wholly cognitive dissonant stuff about loving fellow man - meeting own needs by exercising power over others, gaining status, cruelty and inhumanity from women to women and children, a belief in an important role for self in exorcising and punishing evils - that's something that needs unpacking, because that hasn't passed on either.

And this is why FGM continues. Women harming girls with a patriarchal origin lost in the depths of history. As someone who had a baby in 1994 and unmarried and not even with the father I find it unbelievable that if I had been in a different country I could have been treated in this way. The whole thing is abhorrent. I looked after elderly women in the 90's when care in the community was all the rage. They had been placed in learning disability or mental health hospitals decades earlier for the 'crime' of being raped or just being healthy young women who enjoyed sex and became pregnant as a result.

[quote Weatherwarning]Terribly sad times.

"Some families stood up against it - I remember an old woman when I was a child, and she was a mother to a late middle aged man who lived with her and she had never married, but she had never entered a home nor had she had her son taken form her (for context, he would have been born sometime in the 1940's)."

This was true. I know a woman now in her 80's, who was" illegitimate" but was raised with her extended family. So yes, some families did not abandon their pregnant daughters. I also remember reading of a young woman who was pregnant and remained with her family but was turned away from 2 hospitals, when in labour, due to her being unmarried. She died.
www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30862904.html[/quote]
This happened within my family too - I discovered in my 40s that my aunt's "youngest sister" was in fact her oldest daughter, passed off as her mother's "final fling of the ovaries late accident." (Irish branch of the family, so the alternative would have been a mother and baby home or a Magadelen laundry).

In retrospect, given the alternatives, this was a remarkably humane solution by the standards of the time. And I'm glad to say that since my uncle's death (all complicated, and I don't in any way blame my uncle for the fact that the family kept quiet while he was still alive, don't want to go into details because it's potentially outing for the family) my aunt has been able to acknowledge her daughter as such, and she and her younger half-siblings have a really good relationship.

This report is so long overdue. I just wish there was some chance of justice and reparations, but I fear that there won't be.

I was educated in a convent.
Those nuns were some fucked up bitches-from-hell.
I am now a raging anti-theist.

I cannot get my head around the fact that the people running these institutions thought they were morally in the right.

800 babies and children in a single mass grave, that's not accidental natural deaths that's murder and yet the poor mothers of those children were treated as the sinners.