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JESUS WEPT.
The recently released report of
the ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission’ is a shameful record of
the brutality, ill-treatment and abuse inflicted on generations of women and
their children in these institutions. This punitive attitude to women and
children predates partition but partition led to the creation of two
conservative states on the island of Ireland.The new regime in the Free State
institutionalised this attitude when it abdicated responsibility for addressing
many of the social issues that the state should have been responsible for. It
left these to the Catholic Church and the religious orders.
Mother and Bay homes existed in the
North also. The Executive has put
in place an Interdepartmental group to
investigate and make recommendations on Mother and Baby Homes, Magdalene
Laundries and historical clerical child abuse. This report is due
in the next short while. It is of crucial importance that this report does not
fall foul of the same mistakes that were made about the publication of the
Dublin report. In particular I am referring to the failure to make sure that victims and
survivors got the report before it is published. There is also a clear need for
an all Ireland approach.
There has been a succession of damning reports over the last
three decades. The scandal of the treatment of children in the industrial
schools, the reformatory schools and in orphanages was exposed. Thousands of
children were subject to sustained systemic physical, sexual, and
emotional abuse.
Then came revelations about the Magdalene laundries. Scandal
after scandal. Tens of thousands of children and women ill-treated.
The ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission’ was established after a local historian Catherine
Corless in Galway succeeded in highlighting her research which indicated
that hundreds of babies had died and been secretly buried in Tuam’s
‘Mother and Baby Home.’ In a sewage or septic tank. Corless identified
798 deaths of children who died at the home. There were no burial records.
Last week’s report by the Commission is
shocking in its detail even at almost 3,000 pages - and I am still reading it -
some victims and survivors say that it failed to properly deal with their
plight. Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who rightly apoligised on behalf of the state,
in his response said, “We did this ourselves as a society. We treated women
exceptionally badly. We treated children exceptionally badly... All of society
was complicit in it.”
While all of us have to accept responsibility for ourselves
and our own actions or lack of actions it is wrong to say all society was
complicit. The political establishment was. It failed to protect the health and
welfare of citizens. That is the responsibility in the first instance of the
state. The state is to blame. Of course the churches bear responsibility also.
But the state allowed the churches to do what they did. That should never have
happened. Women and children were victim of a brutal policy based on misogynistic
nonsense and an obscenity that women and their babies should be punished if the
women had sex outside marriage; even if this was forced on them, even if they
were minors, victims of rape. Sex was a public sin. For women. To be punished
publicly. Jesus wept! There were no ‘Men
and Baby Homes’. The women and
babies were lesser beings.
Nine thousand children died in the 18 institutions
investigated by the Commission. Thousands more bear the physical and mental
scars of their experiences. This means that there has to be full redress,
including compensation. And it cannot be a repeat of what has happened
before.
Previously the state put in place schemes which were
allegedly to help victims but often didn’t.
Many victims of abuse in residential institutions were cross
examined when seeking redress, forced to re-live their experiences and were
re-traumatised. Many women from the Magdalene Laundries were initially excluded
from the redress scheme. Women who had suffered symphysiotomies had only two
weeks to apply for redress. Other women, who won their cases in court, had
their verdicts appealed by the state.
The report by the ‘Mother and Baby Homes Commission’ or the upcoming Report from the
Interdepartmental Group in the North is not the last word on this
issue. This work is only beginning.
She Fell Asleep in the Sun
‘She fell asleep in the sun.’
That’s what they used to say
in South Fermanagh
of a girl who gave birth
unwed.
A woman from Kerry told me
what she’d always heard growing up was
Leanbh ón ngréin
a child from the sun.
And when a friend of mine from Tiernahilla
admired in North Tipperary
a little lad running round a farmyard
the boy’s granda smiled:
‘garsúinín beag mishtake’.
A lyrical ancient kindliness
that could with Christ accord.
Can it outlive technolatry?
or churches?
Not to mention that long, leadránach,
latinate, legal, ugly
twelve-letter name not
worthy to be called a name,
that murderous obscenity – to call
Any child ever born
that excuse for a name
could quench the sun for ever.
Pearse
Hutchinson.
A New Plan for Moore Street
Most nations have buildings and
landmarks which are important to them in their struggles for freedom and
independence. Robben Island in South Africa held ANC prisoners for decades,
including Mandela, Sisulu and others. It is now a World Heritage site. The Cu
Chi tunnels in Vietnam are a network of interconnecting tunnels that stretch
for 75 miles. Imagine someone deciding to abandon Robben Island or fill in the
Cu Chi tunnels? Or if the government of India decided to concrete over the
Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar? Its the place where in 1919 the British
Army massacred at least 379 unarmed civilians in an act of slaughter similar to
our Bloody Sunday’s in 1920 and 1972.
Imagine the outrage if the government
of the United States decided to demolish Independence Hall in Philadelphia and
replace it with a Shopping Mall. It is
the location of the second Continental Congress which met to sign the
Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Every nation has these holy places
where freedom was born or won.
We Irish are no different. Dublin’s
GPO, Kilmainham, the H-Blocks and many more places dotted across this island
tell the story of Ireland’s century’s long struggle for independence. The 1916
Easter Rising and its Proclamation of equality and justice inspired others to
throw off the yoke of British colonialism.
Following six days of heroic resistance, the centre of Dublin lay in ruins.
Five of the leaders of the Provisional Government met for the last time
in 16
Moore Street and
ordered the surrender. In 2005 the late Shane MacTomais – historian - wrote
of those events:
“At eight o
clock on Friday evening 28 April
1916, with the GPO engulfed in flames, the Provisional Government of the Irish
Republic and IRA men and women retreated from the building and endeavoured to
make their way to the Four Courts’ Garrison. They left the GPO by the side
entrance in Henry Street and made their way under constant sniper fire to Moore
Lane.
When they
reached Moore Street they entered number five, Dunne’s Butchers, and
immediately began tunneling from one house to another. The next morning, Saturday, they quickly
realised that the wounded James Connolly, who had been placed on a panel door
as a makeshift stretcher would not fit through the openings they had made. The
men then placed Connolly in blankets and bundled him in great agony from house
to house. When they reached number 16, Plunkets, a poultry shop, they placed
him upstairs in the back room.
This small
room, in a small house, in a small market street, in the heart of the capital
city was to be the last place where the members of Provisional Irish Government
held their council of war. Pádraig Mac Piarais, Joseph Plunkett, Tom Clarke and
Seán Mac Diarmada all took their places around James Connolly and discussed
what to do, while Elizabeth O’Farrell, Winifred Carney and Julie Grenan tended
the wounded. The leaders decided that it was necessary to surrender to save
further lives.”
This is Moore Street. It is part of the
1916 Battlefield site – the laneways of history. It has been described by the
National Museum of Ireland as; ‘The most important site in modern Irish
history.’ Today it is again a battlefield site. A major development
company – with the support of past Irish governments – seeks to demolish much
of these laneways to build a Shopping Mall. The four houses – 14-17 Moore Street – which are alone designated a
national monument have been neglected and are in a poor state of repair.
The battlefield
site encompasses the
entire Moore St/O’Connell St. area. It stretches from Tom Clarke’s shop on
Parnell Street; to the GPO; to Jenny Wyse Power’s home on Henry
Street where the 1916 Proclamation was signed; to Moore Lane and Moore Street
where the GPO Garrison retreated; to the spot where ‘The O'Rahilly’ died;
to 16
Moore Street where
five of the seven signatories of the Proclamation - Seán MacDiarmada,
Pádraig Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, James Connolly and Tom Clarke - held their
final meeting; to the Rotunda where the garrison was held by the British and
where the volunteers had been founded three years earlier.
For over a decade a dedicated band of
family members of the signatories - the Save 16 Moore Street Committee and the Families of the
Signatories of the 1916 Proclomation - and their supporters have fought to
protect Moore Street.
Last week the relatives published
the first images of a regeneration plan for the area. The plan has been
commissioned from a team of leading Irish architectural firms, planners and
consultants. They believe that their plan “will not only reverse
decades of official neglect but also act as a catalyst for the future
regeneration of the city’s Northside. The plan also fully meets the
recommendations of Minister Darragh O’Briens Advisory Group on the development
of the Moore Street Battlefield as a historic cultural quarter.” This will
also focus on the needs of local businesses and the Moore Street Traders.
The committee hopes to meet with
Heritage Minister Darragh O'Brien in the coming weeks to discuss their
proposal.
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