I’m blown away by young people
Rosie goes viral on Tiktok with her tales about Tuam 84-year-old tells of ordeal at hands of ‘anti-christ’ nuns
THE first woman to reveal she was locked up in the Tuam mother and baby home said she has been “blown away” by the support after her video went viral on Tiktok.
Rose Mckinney, 84, said she wasn’t even sure what the social media platform was but “couldn’t believe” 500,000 people watched her tell her story.
Rosie, who had three pregnancies by age 19, broke the hearts of thousands of young viewers online when she said she sometimes wishes she was dead.
One of her babies died while the other two were adopted by the nuns.
Thousands of people flooded her short Tiktok video post with messages of support and criticism of the church and State who failed to protect Rosie.
Speaking exclusively to the Irish Sunday Mirror, Rosie said she was “very grateful” for the public’s support of her story.
She added: “They were hard times, we were treated badly, thankfully I was able to escape from it all.
“However, it is important that the younger generation knows what happened to us.
“I am delighted with the support, and I am grateful to the young people I think they are just great for sticking up for themselves and others. I can’t believe it really”.
Rosie said her story is “only one of many” and that she was “not the only one abused by the church and State”.
In the short video, she is interviewed with close friend and Labour councillor Joe Costello.
She says: “Sometimes, I wished I could take my own life, but then I don’t want to leave [my daughter] Margaret.”
The video ends with Rosie bursting into tears on camera, after revealing her pain.
The footage is part of a longer video telling Rosie’s story which was posted on Youtube. Joe said he “wasn’t surprised” that Rosie’s story has captured the attention of half a million viewers.
He said: “It’s so incredible that young people, the generation of today, a new generation can see so clearly that Rosie’s story and all that happened to her is very wrong.
“This is the new Ireland, young people on Tiktok can’t imagine that this could be part of the way we were.
“The church had such control and so many things that happened. Rosie, she is a lifelong friend, she’s a great friend, she is a great powerful woman. “She has always been independent, and has always stood up for herself. She took on the world in the most difficult circumstances. Rosie is a superstar.”
Rosie broke her silence in recent years to be the first woman to speak about her time in the controversial facility.
She has described the nuns and those running the State as “antichrists” saying they all allowed the abuse of thousands of woman to take place.
Born in Dunmore, Co Galway, Rosie first got pregnant at 13 which she lost, but went on to have two children in the home in Tuam between 1955 and 1959.
She said the nuns “were not fit to look after women and children”.
Rosie added: “I don’t really talk about it much – my daughter Margaret would only have learned about it around 20 years ago.
“I want to say that those nuns in that home were antichrists, God forgive me but that’s all they were. They were rotten and bad.
“I am deaf in one ear, it is from all the beatings I got around the head from that lot.
“One nun was very nice to me, Sr Emanuel, the rest were rotten rotten rotten. Antichrists.
“They were cruel to everyone, I wasn’t
the only one, the other girls got it too, they were nothing other that antichrists.
“Maybe they’re all dead now, probably they are, but still no one wants to know.
“I have no time whatsoever for the church, nuns and priests who were involved in those homes.
“I have no time for the Government or politicians. The only politician I have ever told my story to is Joe Costello.
“No one will ever tell me that that place was good. It was far from it. I know, I was there. I remember it. It was a rotten priest who put me in that home and I ended up in there for five years with two babies. In and out of it I was”. Rosie was born in 1938 and is the youngest of nine children. When her family learned she was pregnant she said a priest came to her home “demanding” she go into an institution. She was 15 when she went into the Tuam mother and baby home and was believed to be one of the youngest expectant women there. Rosie said: “My parents didn’t care one way or another. “I had one sister and one brother who got me out of the home. I was petrified on the night I went in. It was a big old building full of women and children.
“The children were grand, I minded them like the other women in there.
“We were busy minding them. I had my son and I had to go then. That was it, out the door.”
Rosie went back to the home a number of years later and gave birth a second time to a baby girl. No investigation into who fathered her children took place that she knows of.
She said: “I was in there for around five years. In and out. They were not your children when you had them, you just had to mind everyone’s child.
“We all did that. All we did was work. In the end I said to another girl ‘we are getting out of here’.
“One day when it was busy with the laundry, we ran out the door and got over the back wall. I couldn’t stick it anymore.”
After she ran away the Garda came looking for her and tried to take her back.
She revealed: “The Guard said nothing, he just waited at the door, but those two bitches of nuns came into my house and I was sitting on the chair.
“I said to them ‘get out of here or I’ll set my dogs on you’. They didn’t say another word, my parents said nothing they weren’t taking me on. They left and that was it.”
Rosie eventually moved to North Dublin and married.
She lives with her daughter Margaret who is an advocate for survivors of the mother and baby home.
Margaret told the Irish Sunday Mirror she was “shocked but grateful” at the amount of supporters her mother had gained on Tik Tok.
I want to say that those nuns in that home were anti-christs
ROSIE MCKINNEY ON HER EXPERIENCES INSIDE TUAM