Tuam campaigner accuses Waters of betraying survivors with ‘hoax’ slur

THE award-winning historian who uncovered the Tuam Mother and Baby Home scandal has said survivors were very distressed to hear John Waters refer to it as a ‘hoax’.

Yesterday, Mr Waters spoke at an event in Notre Dame University in America. The title of his presentation was ‘When Evil Becomes Virtual: Cyberspace, Failing Media, and the Hoax of the “Holocaust of Tuam”.

Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, Catherine Corless said: ‘Hoax is a terrible word to use. It does unsettle the survivors, after what they have been through, and their mothers were through, for someone to say it was a hoax.

‘People have been calling me when they heard about it. It’s an awful slap in the face to them.

‘The truth is out now, things have progressed for the survivors as we’d hoped. John Waters and people like that are only a small group, the majority support the families.’

Kenneth Hallenius, spokesman for the Centre of Ethics and Culture at the university, said Mr Waters set the topic and title himself.

Mr Hallenius said: ‘He will not deny the facts of the case, nor will he challenge the research that has uncovered these facts by Catherine Corless, but rather will analyse its portrayal in the media and popular culture in relation to other contested political matters.’

Questions emailed to Mr Waters on Friday were not responded to by the time of publication.

This is not the first time Mr Waters has discussed the deaths at Tuam in a public forum. Speaking at the University of Navarre in Spain earlier this year, he said: ‘There is no evidence the nuns were in any way culpable.’