MOTHER & BABY HELL HOMES
Taoiseach to apologise but furious survivors say he’s let them down
TAOISEACH Micheal Martin will today apologise for the State’s role in the horror mother and baby homes.
A harrowing report f ound there was an “appalling level of infant mortality ” during their 76- year existence.
However, the Government’s response was slammed last night as campaigner Catherine Corless said: “Our Taoiseach has l et down the survivors again.”
MICHEAL Martin has been accused of selling out the mother and baby homes survivors again.
The Church and State have been slammed for working “hand in hand” to dodge accepting full responsibility.
Historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the scandal of the dead tots at a home in Co Galway, said he was “putting the blame on society”.
The 3,000- page report revealed 9,000 babies died in 18 homes between 1922 and 1998 and tens of thousands of mothers were enslaved.
Ms Corless said: “Mr Martin has let down the survivors again. What they wanted was a [ State] apology, f rom the Church as well, now Mr Martin failed to do that today.
“It’s almost like to the survivors that Church and State are still hand in hand. I’m upset for them. We expected more.”
She was speaking to RTE from her home in Tuam, near the site of the hell hole institution where in 2014 she discovered 800 dead babies who had
been dumped in a septic tank by Bon Secours order nuns.
Launching the report, Mr Martin promised a redress scheme for survivors and vowed the Church would have to pay. He stated: “They must make a contribution.”
He said it was “a dark, difficult and shameful chapter”.
Mr Martin added: “The regime wasn’t imposed on us by any foreign power. We did this ourselves as a society, we treated women and children exceptionally badly.”
He is expected to make a formal State apology in the Dail today.
The shocking findings, which had been shown to survivors before yesterday, revealed there were about 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children in the institutions.
Many of the orphanages were run by Catholic nuns.
The major causes of death were respiratory infections and gastroenteritis. The report added :“The absence of professional staff, combined with what must be acknowledged as a general indifference to the f ate of the children , contributed to the appalling levels of infant mortality. The high rate of infant mortality [ first year of life] in mother and baby homes is probably the most disquieting feature of these institutions.
“It is particularly disquieting that the high mortality rate was known to the authorities both local and national and was even described in public reports. About 9,000 children died in the institutions under investigation – approximately 15% who were in the institutions.”
In 1943, 75% of the children born or admitted to the Bessborough home in Cork died. The Commission said that before 1960, the homes did not save the lives of “illegitimate” children – as they were legally termed then
– and that children were more likely to die in the institutions than outside.
The report stated: “It was especially cold and harsh for women. All women suffered serious discrimination.
“Women who gave birth outside marriage were subject to particularly harsh treatment.”
The findings also revealed some pregnancies were the result of rape, some women had mental health problems while others had an intellectual disability. Overcrowding probably contributed to excess mortality, the investigation found.
Women were admitted to mother and baby homes and county homes because they failed to secure the support of their family and the father of their child, the report noted.
It added: “Their lives were blighted by pregnancy outside marriage, and the responses of the father of their child, their immediate families and the wider community.”
The food “was often adulterated or
unfit for consumption”. Children’s Minister Roderic O’gorman said: “The report is a landmark moment for the Irish State.
“The Commission’s investigation reveals the truth of what happened, within the walls of Mother and Baby Homes and beyond them, to many thousands of women and children.
“Importantly, it also inscribes for posterity those journeys, those heartbreaks, those truths in the words of those who experienced them firsthand. The report makes clear that for decades, Ireland had a stifling, oppressive and brutal ly misogynistic culture, where a pervasive stigmatisation of unmarried mothers and their children robbed those individuals of their agency and sometimes their future.”
Disabilities Minister Anne Rabbitte described the report as“gruesome and horrifying”. The Daughters of Charity order of nuns, which staffed one of the homes, said many of its sisters dedicated their lives to supporting women.
It added: “We regret that we could not have done more to ease the burden and suffering carried by these women.” Niall Boylan, now a DJ on Classic Hits FM, was born in the St Patrick’ s Mother and Baby Home in Dublin. He said yesterday the report was an insult.
He added: “The report said that this was a societal issue, but it doesn’t apportion blame to the Catholic Church. Who moulded society?
“The Catholic Church had moulded the way people think. They are solely responsible and the State paid them to do it.”