‘What is upsetting people is there is no challenge to the Church to make a statement or apologise’
THE wickedness of it all still burns in Mary Moriarty’s memory even after 45 years. She hoped the long-awaited report into the horrors of the Tuam Children’s Home would bring some peace of mind, but it hasn’t.
In the hours after the report was released, historian Catherine Corless, who selflessly and doggedly dragged the truth into the light, felt deflated and hurt.
She said survivors of the home feel the report fails to bring clarity, offer real justice, or even hold anyone to account.
Who is to blame for the deaths and secret illegal burial of 796 children at the Bon Secours-run home? The report says we are – society.
But Ms Corless says it’s not that simple.
“The webinar didn’t enlighten us, and a lot of survivors are very deflated after it.
“They were expecting a lot more. It (the report) is not clear, and there are long-range promises that may never happen.
“What is really upsetting people is there is no challenge to the Church authorities to make a statement at least. Or to offer their own apology.
“It won’t do for the Taoiseach to be apologising on behalf of everybody.
“That is not going to sit very well with survivors. That is all we got out of it.”
Mary Moriarty didn’t know anything about the Tuam Children’s Home back in 1975.
It was a cold October morning when a young and newly married Tuam woman and her neighbours saw a child running about with what appeared to be a skull with a full set of teeth.
The boy told the women he found it in an overgrown patch of grass adjacent to their housing estate. He said there were more.
Horrified, Mary and a couple of her neighbours followed the young boy back to the spot where he had been playing.
Suddenly the ground gave way under her feet.
“People would say they never heard anything about it (the illegal burial of infants), and they never knew anything about it. But I did because I fell into the hole.
“I just went straight down, and I was standing on something hard.
“The women who were with me – I told them to go back because I could see the ground subsiding.
“They were trying to pull me out, and I said, ‘Wait.’ I looked around.
“I feel now there had to have been light coming in from somewhere else.
“On my left, I could see what I thought was like a stairs. There were steps going up one after another.
“And there was things rolled up – cloths.
“Some of them were black, and some were grey, piled up like you would pile 7up bottles.
“If you lined the bottles on their side, that’s the way they were lying – one after another.
“I assume it was the babies,” she says sadly.
“There would be three or four or five together, then it went back a bit, and there would be more. There was a lot of rows,” she said.
“My friends then just pulled me up out of it. I was shocked. My friends asked what did I see and I said I didn’t know.
“It was a terrible experience. I didn’t talk about it. I told my brother there was a hole in the ground and I fell into it. He notified the guards.
“The guards came and covered over the bones, and they filled in the hole, and that was it then for another few years.
“I did get in touch with a woman who worked in the home, and she knew all about it.
“I didn’t say anything, but when it came out, when Catherine Corless brought it out, I was in the hairdresser’s one morning, and a few of the women in there were going mad.
“They were saying they (the babies) shouldn’t be interfered with, and they should be left alone.
“And that made me a bit mad. I knew why they were saying it.
“I said, ‘Well, they were women with children the same as you or I. They are entitled to be known.’
“The whole place went quiet then,” she sighed.
Decades later, Mary decided to tell her story to support Catherine Corless, whose determined work to expose the horror at the home was initially met with widespread silence.
She gave evidence to the Commission of Inquiry.
“I was the first witness that saw it, I think. I think it helped a few people me speaking about it. I hope it did.”
Mary said she finds it hard to feel happy in any way about the report’s final publication.
“I’m glad after five years it has come out, but a lot of the people (survivors of the home) have died in the meantime.
“I’m kind of in two minds about it.
“The way the clergy and the nuns treated the women so bad, and in the name of religion. That’s not what religion is about.”
Thinking about the babies’ burial, she says clearly and slowly: “It was wicked.”
Anna Corrigan’s two older brothers were born and are said to have died in Tuam.
She says the report fails to hold anyone to account and brings her no closer to the truth around her brothers’ lives.
“The apology is rushed and I don’t feel it answered any real questions. The fact is children died of neglect and starvation in a State and Bon Secours-ran home, but it’s not their fault. The survivors need time to process the findings.
“It’s too early and it’s too late. It’s too late because of the suffering that’s gone on since time immemorial for these people that suffered and walked through those doors.
“Also apologies for me are a bit thin on the ground. Actions speak louder than words and the apology should actually wait until people have sight of the report and can actually settle.”
Ms Corless now questions the whole basis for the inquiry.
“It wasn’t a great idea in the first place when you think about it. This is a report of five years’ work by the Commission of Inquiry.
“It was supposed to be a commission of truth, but I feel there were just many statistics,” she said.
“Whatever has come out today, we knew already.
“We are aware of the cruelty and the terrible things that happened. It didn’t say a lot, that half hour by the Taoiseach and Roderic O’Gorman. It didn’t mean anything at all.
“We are completely depleted. I was just speechless for a while.
“We got our hopes up that this is it and today was a day for survivors, and everything will be revealed. Instead, Micheál Martin threw it out on to society. We know that’s not the case.
“There is a lot more than that in it. They didn’t really go into the adoption side of it.
“We know there were illegal adoptions, and they only glossed over it. We know there is a lot of people involved in that. No blame was put on any authority.
“It’s almost as if Micheál Martin thinks he can come out and apologise, and they will all get on with it. That’s the feeling the survivors got today.
“It’s a pity because it was their day, and they are fairly upset. It’s terrible, really. They have been treated very badly.
“It is still Church and State hand in hand.”
The report fails to bring clarity, offer real justice, or hold anyone to account