I suffered from rickets so my legs couldn’t carry my own weight.. I was malnourished 247
OAP reveals impact of abuse & deprivation ENDLESS TRAUMA OF HOME SURVIVORS
A SURVIVOR of a notorious mother and baby home has told how he was so neglected he ended up with a steel knee, a plastic hip and “riddled with arthritis”.
James Fenning, 75, has little memory of the years he spent in the Church of Ireland-run Bethany Home in Dublin.
But he still suffers ailments that stem from the treatment he endured at the facility which closed in 1972.
Bethany was an evangelical Protestant-run home and many of the children who survived were sent to families in the US, England and the North.
James was born in the home and fostered out for periods but it wasn’t until he was five when he was adopted by a family in Belfast that he escaped the hellhole.
However, much of his childhood was spent suffering illnesses which stemmed from his horrific treatment in Bethany. He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “There was something wrong with my legs.
“I remember when I went up to Belfast I’d get cod liver oil to try and help with the pain.
“I had lots of warts on my legs, I suffered from malnutrition and rickets which meant my legs could not carry my upper body weight and I needed callipers to support my upper body.
“I also had rheumatic pain and when I was eight I had a year off school because the pain was so bad.”
The lack of care and nourishment from a young age still affects James who
now has a steel knee, plastic hip and claims to be “riddled with arthritis”.
It is believed up to 247 children died in Bethany according to research by survivor Derek Leinster.
They were placed in paupers’ graves in Mount Jerome and were left unmarked until The Bethany Home Survivors group erected a memorial at the cemetery in 2014.
Most of the deaths are believed to have been from severe malnutrition.
Despite having very limited access to information about his childhood before adoption, James managed to piece together some details. The home’s records state he and Derek were fostered together as babies by a family in Co Wicklow. In his early 40s, James managed to acquire his original birth certificate and got in touch with adoption service agency PACT who gave him some details about his birth mother. And after years of searching, he found her in a care home in Co Tipperary. James said: “I met my birth mother at 50 and she was 93 but it wasn’t a happy reunion. I walked into the home, she looked at me and the words she spoke were, ‘What do you want here?’ “I started to cry so I turned on my heels and walked out. “It was extremely difficult and I still can’t understand why she didn’t want anything to do with me. “She never married and had no other children so it didn’t make sense – that rejection still affects me.” news@irishmirror.ie
Number of children who are believed to have died in Bethany Home