Philomena backs MoS call for Tuam memorial
THE adoption campaigner whose life story became a Hollywood blockbuster has backed the Irish Mail on Sunday’s campaign to have a memorial erected for the 796 babies found in a mass grave in Tuam, Co. Galway.
Philomena Lee’s autobiography, which was turned into a film in 2013, tells how she was forced to give up her son for adoption in 1955 by the nuns at Sean Ross Abbey, Roscrea, Co. Tipperary.
Last weekend she attended a memorial service for the mothers and children who died at the home between 1930 and 1970.
Speaking to the MoS, Philomena said she is ‘appalled’ at the revelations that 796 babies were found in Tuam.
‘I just heard about the Galway story. I cannot get my head around it, it’s too horrendous. It’s like something you would hear in a horror story, but it’s actually the reality. It’s just too horrendous. I don’t know what to say, the shock of it all,’ she said.
‘They don’t know how many are in the grave here in Sean Ross Abbey, no one knows. It could be 700 or so. But they are buried here, too. I support any campaign to make the Government investigate things and I would support a memorial for those children.’
‘I back calls for the Taoiseach to give a public inquiry into these mass graves, it would put so many people’s hearts at rest. People just want the truth,’ she added.
Philomena’s son Anthony Lee was sent to America to be adopted after spending two years with her in the mother and baby home in Co. Tipperary.
‘The nuns told him I abandoned him when he was two weeks old. He never knew I spent my whole life looking for him,’ she said.
‘I get very emotional every time I come here. I always like to come back and be close to him. All the memories come flooding back,’ she added.
‘We were so browbeaten never to tell the story and to keep [it] secret. Too frightened we were in those days because we were classed as immoral. You believed everything the nuns taught you.
‘The past six months there has been just more and more stories, I think I’ve reopened the floodgates. I just want the women in my age group to come out and talk too, and don’t be afraid. Once I told my daughter, I felt relief.
‘The adoption records for people should be opened up, not necessarily to find their mothers if their mothers don’t want to be found, but to know more about their identities.’
Anthony Lee, renamed Michael Hess, became deputy chief legal counsel to the Republican National Committee. He made three visits to Ireland to try to find his mother, but could not persuade the nuns to divulge any information.