Pearse Doherty agus mise at Mother and Baby vigil Wednesday evening
From the USA to China, from Africa and India to
Australia the story of how almost 800 babies and children died in the care of a
religious order and the state were buried in a mass grave in Tuam County Galway
has captured the media headlines for the last week.
The mother and baby home was run by the Bon Secours
Sisters in Tuam, County Galway. It was a state regulated institution, and
information uncovered through the diligent efforts of local woman Catherine
Corless, revealed that 796 babies and children died there over a period of five
decades, from the 1920s to 1961.
Corless, who describes herself as a ‘farmer,
housewife and gardener’ worked tirelessly to secure details of the babies
and children who died in Tuam. She paid €400 to access the Birth and Deaths
Register in Galway. Initially she expected to get information on 8 to 10
children but instead was given a list of 796 names of babies and children who
died in the Tuam home.
Some were only a few days old. Others were aged
between a year and a half and three years of age. The oldest to die was aged
nine.
All were buried in a small plot of land in the
grounds of the home, including some reportedly in a septic tank.
There has been understandable public outrage. In
recent years a succession of distressing reports have revealed the extent of
abuse in state institutions run by the Catholic Church.
The
Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, generally known as the Ryan Commission,
was published in May 2009. It ran to five volumes and looked at the extent of
abuse against children in Irish institutions from 1936.
Most of these related to
the system of residential and industrial schools that were run by the Catholic
Church under the supervision of the Department of Education and which saw
children treated like slaves and prisoners. They were subject to the most
horrendous conditions and abuse.
Other reports, including
the Ferns Inquiry, the Cloyne Report, the Murphy Report and the scandal of the
Magdalene Laundries focused on abuse by Catholic clergy and religious orders.
The Tuam scandal has now
shone a light onto the harsh reality of other institutions. Currently efforts are underway to discover
whether mother and baby homes also existed in the north and what were
conditions like in these.
In Tuam as elsewhere
conditions were harsh. Inspector’s reports and firsthand accounts by former
residents paint a picture of a brutal and cruel regime in which women and
children were treated appallingly.
Records released last week
from the Dublin Archdiocese show that the high mortality rate in Tuam also
existed in the other homes. In 1933 the mortality rate in Tuam was 35%, or over
three times the norm at that time.
In human terms this means
that 42 of the 120 children admitted to Tuam in that year died. The mortality
rate in Pelletstown was 34%. In Bessborough it was 39%. In Sean Ross Abbey is
was 37.5%.
In addition to the mother and baby homes run by
Catholic religious orders there was also Bethany Home in Rathgar. It was run by
an independent protestant group as an evangelical institution for unmarried
mothers and their children. It also took in prostitutes, alcoholics, and young
people under 17. Women and young people convicted in the courts were also sent
there.
Thus far it has been estimated that 219 children
died in Bethany between 1922 when the Home opened and 1949. They were buried in
unmarked graves. Some died from marasumus – a form of malnutrition. Conditions
in the Catholic run homes were no better.
In an Inspectors report in 1947, which recorded the
conditions in Tuam, there is a distressing and disturbing account of life for
its residents. Children are described as emaciated and suffering from
malnutrition and of having wizened limbs.
In addition to the inhuman
treatment endured by residents was added the outrage that some were treated as
guinea pigs in vaccine experiments. According to the UCC historian Michael
Dwyer 2,051 children from the homes at Bessborough and Roscrea were used
in secret vaccine trials conducted by Burroughs Wellcome – now GlaxoSmithKline.
The trials included injecting children with vaccines for diphtheria, whooping
cough, tetanus and polio.
Children in St. Clare’s in
Stamullen, in Dunboyne, in St Patrick’s Dublin and in Castlepollard were also
used in vaccine trials.
Who gave permission for
such actions to be carried out? Did the relevant government department or
Minister agree and clear the use of Irish children as guinea pigs? We need an
inquiry to find out.
To the shame of all of
those responsible the ill-treatment of the children and babies continued beyond
their short lives as most were buried in unmarked graves.
On Tuesday the Irish government finally announced
the establishment of a Commission of Investigation into mother and baby homes.
This is a welcome development but it is vital that the Commission has terms of
reference that are comprehensive and allow it to examine all aspects of this
issue.
For many citizens there is genuine bewilderment at
what has emerged. How could anyone treat mothers and babies in this way? How
could the state abdicate its responsibility to citizens?
The root of this shame is to be found in partition
and the creation of two conservative states on this island. Both were
characterised by economic failure, by emigration, by backwardness on social
issues, by inequality and by the failure to protect the most vulnerable of our
citizens.
In the north a one party unionist regime dominated
politics and institutionalised sectarianism, discrimination and inequality and
injustice.
In the south the state that emerged following the
civil war was in hock to the Catholic Hierarchy.
Two conservative states ruled by
two conservative elites in their own narrow interests. The old colonial system
replaced by a neo-colonial one.
It was in these
circumstances that the abuses that occurred in the Magdalene Laundries, in
Bethany Home, in the residential "Reformatory and Industrial Schools"
and in the mother and baby homes occurred.
Report after report has confirmed that for much of
its existence the state system for looking after children abused and treated
them more like slaves than citizens.
Dáil records show that successive governments knew
about the high infant mortality and the poor quality of care in institutions
looking after children. They did nothing.
As Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin told the Dáil: “There have been attempts to place the
blame on wider Irish society because of the deeply conservative social
attitudes that dominated in those decades. And it absolutely has to be
acknowledged that the social attitudes of those times were disdainful of great
numbers of people and cast them out of society.
However,
this can be too easily be twisted into a view that since everyone was to blame
– no one was to blame. The reality was that there were powerful social and
economic forces, powerful men in Church and State, who ruled this society and
who ensured that women and children and the poor and the marginalised were kept
in their place. Much has changed for the better but much has also yet to change.”
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