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?

My mother was educated by nuns in the 50’s. The systematic abuse robbed her of her faith for the rest of her life

A complete atrocity. There will be no justice for these families. I really can’t see what they could possibly do to make amends now. Im sure versions of this went on in the whole of the U.K, although not state sanctioned I suppose. There was a care home type place for people with disabilities in the town I grew up in (huge old building that had been the workhouse). I know in the 80s there were old women in there who had been sent there by their families and spent their entire lives essentially incarcerated because they’d had children out of wedlock as teens. No idea what happened to the babies. My own family did it the kind way. My great grandfather was bought up believing his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his older sister. She became pregnant as a teen after very probably being raped working in service. Im sure the entire village must have known the truth, but still a good effort on their part to keep the family together. My heart bleeds for all those poor women and children.

@MichelleofzeResistance I agree with pretty much everything you say, but have to pull you up on saying "this happened in the UK"
The period covered in the report starts in 1922, so this happened in the Republic of Ireland.
While the Catholic Church was influential in pre- independence Ireland, it was after, when it became responsible for providing almost all education, that the insidious power that lead to these situations really took hold.
There was of course shame I being an unmarried mother before, and was similar social and religious shame in the UK until relatively recently, but not the disgusting and disgraceful system of mother and baby 'homes'.

Those poor women and children. Just unthinkable.

Yes and I think the film Philomena is very accurate about what went on in these homes.

@Handsoffstrikesagain

colouring I am so so sorry I didn’t mean to minimise what happened to your mum in mentioning my experience in the same comment. It was more about overall for the thread x

No offence taken. She would be one of the first to admit she was less affected than the thousands of women in this report. I am reading it now. Am heart sore for these women and their babies

It's bloody heartbreaking.

I used to have a cleaning job when I was a student, the lovely Irish lady who shared my shift used to talk about the asylum that she used to work in back in Ireland when she was a teenager, there were ladies who had been commited for having children out of wedlock, they were perfectly sane and had rotted for their whole lives in an institution, they didn't know what had happened to their babies.
My friend talked about it a lot, it still haunted her years later.

My friend had her baby in one of these homes in the early 90’s. She was sent by her family, her mother really, because she was pregnant out of wedlock. She was at university, living away from home and working and there was no reason at all she couldn’t just have carried on as she was and raise her baby. But no- the shame was so much for her mother that it just wasn’t going to be allowed. She was sent away for the last 3 months to hide her belly and then have the baby adopted. She had him, and on the day she was to sign him over she took him and ran. The nuns tried to stop her but she got away. Thankfully when she turned up at home with him her father decided to be a decent human being and convinced her mother to them stay. He couldn’t convince her mother to talk to her for several months after that but her baby was safe and with his mum.

The interview tonight with the lovely man born to an unwed mother in the Tuam mother and baby home. Truly awful, the nuns wouldn't even let those children mix with the other children, he kept emphasiding that it was always the women that bore the cost (and the children of course). And all the ones that didn't make it, their little bodies just dumped. Beyond awful.

Remember evil as those places were, it was the girls & women’s families that sent them there.

@Annasgirl

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".

Well said, @Annasgirl. Everyone knew.

And yes, no one was incarcerated in a mother and baby home because of a feeling rather than their female bodies and a capacity to be oppressed and othered because of that biology.

I find it difficult to understand how the parents of these women would place their daughters in these homes. Did they know how they and the babies were treated ? Did they not care ?
The nuns did not have to recruit these women , they were delivered there by parents usually. I know people will say that the country was in the grip of Catholicism , but to me , that is the same as Germans saying they were in the grip of Hitler.

While the actual women who carried put this abuse and neglect are ultimately responsible, I think the people around these women also bear some responsibility.

There is no such thing as any meaningful compensation. Money doesnt matter. The present government was not responsible , so can not issue any real apologies. The only thing that can be done is releasing this Report and acknowledging the dark history of these institutions.

Reading some of the findings and then have to stop as it's so upsetting. The treatment of these women and children was disgusting and full of hatred.

15 year old girl held down with ropes during labour. Brought by her mother and she didn't tell any of her 12 siblings.

Lots of girls and women were raped and this is how they were treated as a result of getting pregnant from that rape?

Also Ireland was apparently one of the last countries in Europe to bring in legal adoption as they had concerns that Irish babies would be adopted by people from other religions

So ashamed that this is what went on in this country and still goes on in different guises

@MichelleofzeResistance

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.

Hear, hear! It’s disgusting and heartbreaking.

It is not enough.

What is needed is full disclosure, identification and location of children living or dead, families to be informed, prosecution of any individuals left with evidence against them, 'truth and reconciliation' hearings for families who sent their pregnant daughters and sisters to such places and transparency with full accountability for the church and government. All secrets laid bare.

Those children. And so many more around the world.
Those women.

I wail and rage in silence, my anger tears at the souls of those who harmed you, while i despair at my own failing, in my lifetime, to stand with those in need. May this never happen again.

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.

This could easily be mistaken for a description of what has recently been uncovered at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust (women and babies being killed, bereaved families being blamed for their losses), and will still be happening in others in darkness. Again, misogyny.

In both cases, light was only shone on the atrocities because individuals campaigned and fought and poured their souls into shouting at people who did not want to listen until they were heard.

Not because government or other institutions were listening or alert to the possibility of atrocities and the need to safeguard people.

Because individuals managed to get media outlets with sufficient clout to take up the story. I was reading today that the first media org to cover the Tuam mass grave went ignored - action was only taken in response to a more powerful org taking it up.

This news today was not the result of the people responsible choosing to finally take responsibility, nor because government fulfilled its duty of care to the population, nor because society had changed and was seeking to make amends - but because the media made it embarrassing for them to continue ignoring it.

That makes it so much more horrifying to me.

Think of all the suffering that does not have the power of a voice and is still being ignored and suppressed. It is dangerous when we declare that things like this are entirely of the past and could not still be happening "because it's 2021" . Like the date on a calendar is some form of protection. Misogynistic atrocities are still being enabled and committed in our societies today.

I'm not sure I can bring myself to read much about this. It is so heartwrenchingly wrong. I'm pregnant now and was at secondary school in 1998, it's really not that long ago. For all the idiots bleating that we don't need feminism (not here, but it's upsetting how often I hear this as a secondary teacher): yes we do, and this is why!!! This is why church and state should be separated. This is why we should never, ever disapprove of women getting pregnant in less than ideal circumstances. A baby is a blessing. Not embracing that idea is the first step on the road to practices like these. A woman's choice is final, always.

Oh and whilst I normally agree that comparisons to Nazi Germany weaken rather than strengthen arguments, I wholeheartedly agree with the poster who said Ireland needs to accept this dirty episode in its past and the fact that it was only possible for it to happen because the vast majority of the population went along with it tacitly even if they didn't outright support it.

I recommend Alison O'Reilly's book although it's hard reading, as a daughter of a woman affected she is one of the family members who has fought this into daylight and describes the campaign.

I'm crying buckets here, yet it isn't even deemed important enough for the online Guardian to have it on its front page. Fucking hell. The patriarchy is alive and kicking.

Totally horrifying and not that long ago! I do think alot of families would have taken on a younger girls/women child if they had the means to do so. Those with Irish ancestry may notice if you look it up that women in their late 40s/early 50s were named mother to children and I don't think that many women in that time were biological miracles (it can happen but its rare) but I always think a younger girl in the family fell pregnant and the girls parents chose to raise the baby as their own to protect the girl. But of course if the family turned the young woman out, it is beyond horrifying. Also many girls were also sent to England for abortions but what the nuns and the church did is one of the biggest scandals of the 20th century. How many older women now ache for the child they were forced to give up, utterly heartbreaking.

@MichelleofzeResistance

I recommend Alison O'Reilly's book although it's hard reading, as a daughter of a woman affected she is one of the family members who has fought this into daylight and describes the campaign.

Thankyou for this, I have just bought the book