Homes for mothers and babies in Ireland: 9,000 babies and children died in 18 homes for mothers and babies, says the report

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”.

The Irish mother and her baby's survivors have spent decades fighting for the truth.  They can finally see an end in sight

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.

Survivor Philomena Lee, who spent years looking for the child she was forced to give up for adoption, said in a statement on Sunday that she “waited decades for this moment – the moment when Ireland reveals how tens of thousands of single mothers, such as me and the tens of thousands of our beloved children, like my dear son Anthony, were shattered, simply because we were single at the time our children were born. “

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”.

Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Tipperary, who served as a mother and son at home from 1930 to 1970.

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. “

A memorial at the former site of Casa Tuam in County Galway, where the bodies of hundreds of babies who died were placed in a deactivated sewer tank.

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.

For decades, Ireland's mothers and baby homes have been shrouded in secrecy.  Some say the veil has not yet been lifted

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.”

Lee also underlined the role that other state and private institutions played, saying in her statement that she “can only hope” that the report’s authors recognize that “those of us who were detained against our will … and who gave birth there, not all mothers or children have suffered. “

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

In addition to the public release of the report on Tuesday, O’Gorman also introduced legislation to advance “burial legislation” to “support excavation, exhumation and, where possible, the identification of remains and their dignified burial” at the site Tuam, County Galway, who was first identified by local historian Catherine Corless, whose tireless work was the catalyst for the commission’s launch in 2014. The legislation also applies to “any other place where intervention is reasonably necessary”, according to the Ministry of Children and Youth.

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.

The names of some of the 796 children who died at Tuam's house are seen at a memorial in County Galway in 2019.
Other interim reports, of which there are seven, detail more details of the horrific circumstances that mothers and their children faced within these institutions.

A total of 900 babies born or admitted to hospitals near County Cork’s Bessborough home died during childhood.

In 1944, infant mortality rates at the Bessborough home reached 82%. Only 64 of the tombs of these 900 babies have been located.

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

Although the launch of the final report closes a chapter on the commission’s work, survivors’ rights groups say their work is not over yet.

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.

In October, the government passed a law promising to seal the commission’s file from survivors and the public for 30 years. Days later, the government changed its position, saying that the survivors of the houses had a legal right to access their personal data.

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.

An Irish daughter seeks to end the shame of her secret adoption

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.”

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