Prosecute the Tuam perpetrators

Ivor Shorts’s sincerity shines through in his letter (Irish Independent, March 17). He is horrified the term holocaust is used for crimes not approaching the depravity of the slaughter of millions of Jews.

I agree, but sometimes people find it hard to describe the awful treatment meted out in mother and baby homes and use a phrase everyone understands.

We do need a phrase to describe precisely what happened in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home and we must hold the perpetrators accountable. Compared with the Holocaust, the scale of the crimes was small but truly horrific. What kind of mind is so depraved and desensitised that it can treat little babies like this?

We gaze at a sleeping baby and we marvel at the miracle; the little round head, the button nose, the translucent skin, the sweeping eyelashes.

The babies in Tuam Mother and Baby Home looked just like this precious little bundle, but they were thrown into a cesspit when they died. The actual, physical little baby was thrown out like trash.

There was no weeping mother, no last hug and kiss, no little funeral clothes, no casket, not a shred of dignity.

In the real world, criminals are prosecuted and, if found guilty of a crime, imprisoned. I appreciate that in Ireland, in a case like Tuam, this does not happen.

First, we must have an inquiry, a tribunal, a commission and a report, into the foul ethos of Tuam Mother and Baby Home and the people who perpetrated these unthinkable acts on the bodies of babies.

That, of course, ensures that everyone has time to get their stories straight and make sure their records support their evidence. And, after all that, prosecution will prove too difficult, for various reasons.

Before the authorities tell us which toothless procedure they have decided on, let us insist that the alleged criminals are arrested and tried.

Let us start with criminal negligence and go from there. The list of alleged and putative crimes is long, very long.

After all this time, each post-mortem may fail to tell if the babies were unconscious before being thrown away, but such post-mortems must be carried out, and not just for identification.

We need to start holding accountable people who have life and death authority over the lives of the vulnerable. Patricia R Moynihan Castaheany, Co Dublin