‘Nuns faked death certs so children could be sent to US’
Barnardos boss Fergus Finlay fears many don’t know they were adopted
BARNARDOS chief Fergus Finlay has claimed that the nuns in several mother and baby homes faked death certificates for scores of children so they could be adopted to the US.
Mr Finlay also said he believes there could be hundreds of people in the UK and US who have spent their lives not knowing they were living under false identities after being illegally adopted from Ireland.
The charity boss said his organisation has received a ‘huge number of calls’ since the Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, announced there were a ‘significant amount of human remains found at the former Tuam mother and baby home’.
Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, Mr Finlay said: ‘Barnados has been working with mothers and families from mother and baby homes for 30 years.
‘I feel it’s important to say I have no doubt at all that a large amount of children’s death certs were falsified by the nuns and there’s a whole community in the UK and US that don’t know they were ever adopted.
‘I can’t prove it but I’m working in this area long enough to know there’s no doubt about it. There are people who don’t know they were adopted, and those people had a life in a mother and baby home here at some point.
‘As far as the Irish state is concerned, they died as children in the homes and that’s where their lives ended – when in reality they were taken away under a new name and living under a new identity in another country. I’ve no doubts about that.’
Mr Finlay’s comments were echoed by historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the names of the 796 children who died in the controversial religious-run mother and baby home in Tuam, Co. Galway.
She told the Mail: ‘I don’t believe all of the Tuam babies are in the grave. I have no doubt the nuns falsified death certs and the children were illegally adopted out to America. All the children have to be found.’
Mr Finlay continued: ‘We have been inundated with calls for the past number of weeks since this all happened. We were very busy also in 2014 when the story first appeared.’
Mr Finlay also said the Department of Foreign Affairs – in which he worked in the Nineties – discovered documents containing passport applications for children in a basement.
He said: ‘We came across acres of files of applications for passports for children, so the Government knew about it too. Not all children needed passports – it depended on the year they were taken away. But there are acres of historical files on the national archives because we gave them over.’
Speaking about the Tuam scandal, he added: ‘I find it all so shocking... it’s the thoughts of children being buried in a septic tank in an unmarked grave, we can’t seem to live with that, we can’t accept that.
‘Children were abused, children were neglected and children were buried in unmarked graves. We can’t live with that.
‘Some priest at some point had to have come in to the homes and said these children are not going into consecrated ground. I find that appalling. A historical study of the homes where all records are made available should happen.’
A Commission of Investigation into mother and baby homes has been set up, but Mr Finlay said: ‘A commission for years is not the way to go – we need a historical commission and to make everything public.’
Mr Finlay’s comments come following the circulation of three HSE internal memos in 2012 which state that there ‘may be thousands’ of cases where people had their birth history falsified so they could be illegally adopted.
Declan McKeown, of the HSE medical intelligence unit, claimed in his memo at the time that his research shows there was ‘possible interference with birth and death certification which requires further investigation’. He noted that the death rates in the Tuam and Bessborough mother and baby homes were five times higher
‘All the children have to be found’ ‘We need to make everything public’
than in the public at large.
The reports revealed the HSE expressed concern then that up to 1,000 children may have been ‘trafficked’ to the US from the Tuam mother and baby home, in a ‘scandal that dwarfs other more recent issues with the Church and State’, following the discovery of a ‘large archive’ of documentation relating to the institution.
The internal note, from a teleconference in October 2012, ends with a recommendation that ‘this go all the way up to the minister’ so that ‘a fully fledged, fully resourced forensic investigation and State inquiry’ could be launched.
‘This may prove to be a scandal that dwarfs other, more recent issues with the Church and State, because of the very emotive sensitivities around adoption of babies, with or without the will of the mother,’ states the note.
‘A concern is that, if there is evidence of trafficking babies, that it must have been facilitated by doctors, social workers, etc, and a number of these health professionals may still be working in the system.’
A further HSE report prepared after an examination of records from the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork in 2012 expressed concerns that death records were falsified at the institution so children could ‘be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements’ at home and abroad. When the Adoption Act of 1952 was implemented, the death rates dropped.
St Patrick’s Guild adoption agency is known to have organised up to 2,000 illegal adoptions; in 2014, the Irish Mail on Sunday revealed how a man in his 50s was the latest person to be told he had two birth certificates and no court adoption order – meaning he was illegally adopted.
Any children who were trafficked may not even know they are adopted.
FERGUS Finlay, the respected head of one of our largest children’s charities, alleges that nuns at mother and baby homes faked the death certificates of babies in order to meet the demand for adoption to the US and the UK.
His claims echo suggestions made in a HSE draft report, which suggests this could explain why death rates at homes appeared to fall dramatically once tighter laws around adoption were put in place in the 1950s.
Evidence for such a practice would be, by its nature, extremely difficult to find. Essentially, it relies on tracking down an adopted child – who is probably by now in his or her sixties or seventies – and proving that that person is actually the same child who was recorded by the nuns as having died.
Nevertheless, it is a claim which must now be fully investigated by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.
When it comes to addressing our past and reconciling ourselves to the reality of what happened in this country, the most important first step is ascertaining the truth – however hard others may have tried to bury it.