Widespread Abuse in Ireland: The Terrifying Story of Mother and Child Homes

Ireland lifts the veil on one of the darkest pages in its history.

A report on "mother and child homes", which received pregnant women after an out-of-wedlock relationship, revealed that 9,000 children died in these homes.

The surviving mothers and children suffered a real ordeal there.

Today, the victims testify, but many questions remain unanswered. 

On January 13, the Irish Prime Minister presented the state's apologies to the survivors of "homes for mothers and children", religious institutions which have welcomed single mothers and their children born out of wedlock for decades in often deplorable conditions.

The apology came after the publication of the results of a government-commissioned investigation six years earlier.

These established "that about 9,000 children [had] died in these homes, or about 15% of the children who [had been] there".

This dark side of history would probably not have been revealed without the curiosity of Catherine Corless, a stay-at-home mother and historian in her spare time.

In the small town of Tuam;

in County Galway, she decides to start investigating.

As a child, she was marked by her school years where she rubbed shoulders with skinny, poorly dressed children who sometimes vanished overnight.

Very quickly, she discovers that 800 names have disappeared from the burial registers.

800 children who are known to have died but whose traces have disappeared.

In 2014, his research led to the identification of a mass grave under the home of the Sisters of Bon Secours de Tuam.

A "cold" place

These homes were run by the Church and subsidized by the State.

Their objective was to welcome women who became pregnant outside marriage: they were often young, poor mothers who were isolated in these houses until the birth of their child.

In 20th century Catholic Ireland, illegitimate children were generally hidden away.

“My family knew I was pregnant, but I couldn't stay because of the shame,” Sheila explains.

Having fallen pregnant at the age of 19, she did not wait for her family to make a decision to come to the shelter on her own.

"The Church kept telling us that committing original sin was terrible, that it dishonored your family, the parish, the neighbors ... So I knocked on the door, I entered my name in the register and when you do that you become the property of the state. "

Sheila only spent a year in Saint Patrick's House in Dublin.

But she keeps a vivid memory of it.

She describes a "cold" place, the cleaning or babysitting job she was forced to do, and not being able to talk to other women.

Nuns are omnipresent.

Sheila says they yelled at her during childbirth, telling her that she was "paying for her sins."

"When my son was born, [he] was put in the nursery. I was not allowed to look or touch my flesh and blood."

The suffering of the "surviving" children

The government-initiated Commission of Inquiry admitted that children born in religious homes between 1922 and 1998 saw their "survival prospects significantly reduced".

The "survivors" were quickly torn from their mother but suffered, like her, the difficult living conditions and humiliations.

"The conditions were very primitive," says John, now 72 years old and born in the house in Tuam.

"The toilets were outside, they were full all the time, never repaired… there were a lot of sick children."

Sent to schools, the children of the household are not allowed to mingle with others.

Even after successfully bonding with other boys his age, John experiences ongoing psychological abuse.

"A friend of mine once said to me: 'you know what that means illegal?'

I told him it was the child of an unmarried woman. He said 'no, that means you shouldn't exist'. "

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After the home in Tuam, John is sent to a foster family, in the deep countryside, where his new parents are paid 3 pounds a month by the state to take care of him.

At 16, he left for England but began a period of virtual wandering that would last ten years.

"I always felt excluded, I didn't know who I was, what I was going to do with my life, and my mother's ghost was stalking me…" The latter wrote to her son, begging him to come back to live with her .

“I didn't love my mother! I was running away from her. I didn't want to be associated with this ill-reputed woman. I stuck to the teachings of the Church. But years later when I got married and that I had children, I realized that was a huge lie. So I started looking for my mother. "

He says he cried with joy when he found her, he was then in his forties.

“It was the best day of my life!” He blurted out, struggling to suppress a sob.

"I waited so long to meet my real mother. She turned out to be a woman of exceptional willpower, she was a beautiful mother to me."

Organized traffic for adoption

The report on homes for mothers and children suggests that the Catholic Church has organized real trafficking in adoption.

The homes sometimes took on the air of supermarkets: according to certain testimonies from "survivors", unknown adults followed one another, looking at the children and choosing the one they would adopt.

Much later, when their parents died, some even found "receipts" appearing to attest to payment for the adoption, disguised as a "donation".

A law of 1953 was to establish controls and organize the monitoring of children.

But according to Majella, born at St. Patrick's House in Dublin and now 49, her application varied widely.

“Sometimes I feel like I have been punished. I was separated from my mother and given to an abusive family,” she says.

At only 2 years old, the authorities looked into her case when they discovered her covered in bruises.

Despite everything, she returns to her adoptive parents.

“In the eyes of the Church and the law, it was okay since they were married! I had to be thankful that I was given to a real family. I believe I deserve an apology. No amount of money will heal my injuries. "

A "repair plan"?

The question of possible reparations or financial compensation paid to victims has not yet been decided.

The Irish government has yet to present a "reparation plan".

According to

The Irish Times

, compensation is one of the options being considered.

This does not prevent many survivors from being satisfied with this report, nor with the apologies of the government and certain religious congregations.

They denounce a very approximate work and a suspicious reluctance to make public the 550 hearings carried out.

Noelle Brown was born in the Bessborough home for mothers and children in southern Ireland and adopted.

After testifying before the Commission, she asks to receive the script of her interview but receives a categorical refusal.

She makes many requests and ends up receiving a few pages of questions and answers riddled with errors.

The text stated, for example, that she had been raised by her biological parents, although she never knew them.

"The report despises the injuries and rekindles the trauma of the survivors," she laments, continuing: "The whole country is behind us and this is the first time that we have had so much support. In October, when the government wanted to put under seal for 30 years the recordings made by the Commission, it caused such an uproar that they had to back down. "

Identity quest

The main demand of the Irish is to be able to access information.

The survivors suffer from an almost impossible search for identity: the archives of the houses remain closed and some registers have been falsified.

After 17 years, by dint of appeals to congregations and social workers, Noelle was able to find the trace of her two biological parents ... unfortunately after their death.

All that remains is her anger: "I want the Commission to be accountable," she storms, demanding the exhumation of the bodies of babies in mass graves and their burial in dignified conditions.

She also hopes for a criminal investigation "for these 9,000 dead children".

"Get the Catholic Church out of the game, make her pay! She made a lot of money on the backs of these women, taking babies to sell in Ireland. It was a state-run business. and the Church and they made a lot of money like that! "

The clergy have been particularly powerful in Ireland: the Church has long had control over schools and hospitals.

In 1937, it was even given a special position in the Constitution, with in particular the right to review the laws.

Today many Irish people feel concerned and a problem of unprecedented magnitude presents itself to the government.

The Commission of Inquiry looked into the cases of 56,000 women and 57,000 children who passed through only 18 of these houses.

However, there would have been a total of more than 180 centers in Ireland, ten times more.

Hundreds of thousands of people are therefore potentially affected.