Little ones ‘still hidden from view’
EXCLUSIVE
THE daughter of a woman who was in Castlepollard Home has said it is shameful that all of the babies who died are “still hidden behind walls”. Fiona Cahill’s grandmother Philomena became pregnant at 19 after fleeing Ireland where she had grown up in Kilkenny Industrial School. She gave birth to her first child, Maria, on March 27, 1954, in a Red Cross mother and baby home before both Philomena and her baby were sent to Castlepollard by the Catholic Crusade organisation. Fiona, who lives in the UK, told how she has researched her mother’s story and was heartbroken to learn of the 9,000 babies who died across Ireland in the homes. She said: “When I read about the blacksmith’s nails in the walls for the children at Castlepollard, there was nothing that will ever make that OK. “There are 9,000 babies in the different institutions and to this day they are still behind the walls – they kept meticulous records, yet there are no burial records. “They didn’t die of natural causes, they died of neglect.
PUNISHED
“It was deliberate, they were there to be punished. My mother was treated badly. “This was an attitude that was cultured and fostered by the Church and allowed by the State. “Those babies should not be left there – they need to be reunited with family members that want them where they can be identified or when they can’t be, they should be moved from those abusive institutions and put somewhere else where they can be remembered. “The fact they were left behind in walls of institutions, it is too much – it’s as if they still have control of them, they are left there with no peace.” Fiona’s mother was eventually adopted, but they did manage to track down her biological family. She added: “People never ever think about enforced separation. And that’s what happened to my mother and her mother. “It is a human rights crime keeping them apart. They don’t want to acknowledge that even today. “It gets to me. It wasn’t one evil nun, it was systemic, this was how they treated sex outside of marriage. “It still upsets me. It’s just it’s because it is a deep trauma, transgenerational trauma, it has affected my own life.”