Some 56,000 people – from 12-year-old girls to women in their 40s – were sent to the 18 institutions investigated, where about 57,000 children were born, according to the report.
One in seven of these children (15%) did not survive long enough to leave their homes, but no alarm was raised by the state about high mortality rates, although it was “known to local and national authorities” and was “registered in official publications “found the report.
Prior to 1960, homes for mothers and babies “did not save the lives of ‘illegitimate’ children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects for survival,” the document said.
The report considers infant mortality rates to be the “most disturbing feature of these institutions”.
Speaking on Tuesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that the report “opens a window to a deeply misogynistic culture in Ireland for several decades” and that the report “reveals significant flaws in the state and society”.
The report, which has more than 2,800 pages, was released a few days after its main findings were leaked to a national newspaper – aggravating the pain and anguish of survivors who waited years for the final report – and who were promised a first look at it by the Minister of child.
Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance and a member of a dedicated group of survivors appointed to advise the government, told CNN on Tuesday that the leaked extracts from the report, seen on Sunday, show that the Irish government can seek to “trivialize” “the human rights abuses that occurred on a” massive scale “inside these houses.
During her time at the home of the mother and baby of Sean Ross Abbey, Lee said she was “deprived” of her freedom, independence and autonomy and was “subject to the tyranny of nuns”, who told mothers daily that they should atone for their sins, “working for our livelihood and handing our children over to nuns for forced adoption”.
Lee, whose story was told in an Oscar-nominated film starring Judi Dench, added that she was “insulted” by the nuns during a difficult delivery, which she says told her that “pain was a punishment for my promiscuity”.
The commission’s final report reported that this practice was not uncommon.
For many survivors and advocacy groups, there is concern that the report will not be able to justify their experience.
Lohan told the national broadcaster RTE that the institutions were a “form of social engineering” and that “the state and the church worked together to ensure that women – single mothers and girls who were considered a threat to the country’s moral tone” were “imprisoned behind these very high walls to ensure that they do not impact or offend public morality”.
On Tuesday, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Affairs, Roderic O’Gorman, said: “The report makes it clear that for decades Ireland has had a suffocating, oppressive and brutally misogynist culture, where a widespread stigmatization of single mothers and their children stole their agency and sometimes their future from these individuals. “
The survivors are expected to receive an official apology from Martin, the Irish prime minister, on Wednesday.
But for many, this apology will not be enough.
Lohan told CNN that she disagrees with the state’s planned apology, saying that no apology should be issued until survivors have a chance to read and digest the Commission’s findings, which could take several weeks.
She also suggested that an apology should be the first in a series of several, noting that the commission’s investigations covered only 18 institutions, while some 180 locations were part of an Irish system that facilitated child neglect, premature death, adoptions. forced disappearances, forced labor, removal of identities, falsification of State documents and obtaining consent from mothers.
The report does not appear fully address allegations of forced or illegal adoptions, only stating that “many allegations have been made that large sums of money have been given to institutions and agencies in Ireland that have organized foreign adoptions. Such claims are impossible to prove and impossible to refute.”
Tens of thousands passed through other public hospitals and private institutions and “suffered the same fate,” she said.
After having a brief glimpse of the report’s summary on Wednesday, Lohan said the survivors were disappointed by the apparent lack of attention to the main topics and that some survivors now felt that their evidence was being discredited, since the Commission had rejected it. certain allegations, citing lack of evidence.
The question of why the houses were established in the first place appears to have been covered up, some groups of advocates said, undermining the trauma suffered by mothers and their children.
Although the report documented the testimony of women detailing torture and beatings, it said that “there is no doubt that women in the homes of mothers and babies have been subjected to emotional abuse, but there is very little evidence of physical abuse and no evidence of sexual abuse” . “
The report also does not appear to address the testimony of some survivors, who said that senior members of the Catholic Church forced them into the houses, as well as their families.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Martin said that “in principle, I think the religious orders involved should make a contribution” to a proposed reparation scheme.
‘Destroyed’ records
About 973 children died in or near Tuam’s mother and baby’s home, according to the commission, which revealed that some of his remains were found inside a disabled sewage tank.
Only 50 burial records in Tuam were found; others “may have been lost or destroyed over the years,” according to a March 2019 interim report.
A total of 900 babies born or admitted to hospitals near County Cork’s Bessborough home died during childhood.
The commission also found that, between 1920 and 1977, the bodies of more than 950 children who died in some of the homes were sent to medical schools for “anatomical studies”.
Restricted access
Survivors have long hoped that the commission will reveal more about allegations of arbitrary detention, cruelty and neglect, forced adoption and vaccine testing that take place at home, as well as holding violators accountable.
And, crucially, they also hoped it would help them access their personal records, including information about missing relatives and babies buried in unmarked graves.
Critics of the law successfully argued that sealing the commission’s records was illegal under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive that gives individuals the right to access their data.
Now survivors ‘rights groups are warning that the government – and state agencies, including the child and family agency, Tusla – are still restricting survivors’ access to their own records.
In a note to CNN, Tusla reiterated the issue of access to the government, saying that “the absence of legislation to address the provision of information will continue to be a source of great anxiety for people, and the resolution of this issue is beyond Tusla’s reach. “
“We recognize the pain and trauma experienced by those who are affected by the Commission’s report on the Mother and Baby Houses, who are understandably in search of their identity,” said the statement.
Meanwhile, the agency still routinely denies survivors – especially adopted people – access to their own personal information, birth certificates, identities and even their ethnicities, says Lohan.
“These abuses did not end in 1998, when the last of the horrible places closed.”