Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
It is an agonizing story, and a book has been written about it and a movie was also recently made about it. The story I am referring to is the story of Philomena Lee who at the age of 19 gave birth to a baby boy, out-of-wedlock, at the Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, in Ireland. If you are unfamiliar with the story, Philomena became pregnant out-of-wedlock after being raised in a convent after her mother died at the age of 6. Her father kept 3 boys at home and put Philomena and her two sisters in the convent because he was unable to care of all of them.
After she left the convent at age 18, she became pregnant and was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey where her son was born and three years later, was adopted and moved to America. If you have seen the movie or read the book you know what happened to her son, who she never saw alive again. But the story of Philomena is not the main focus of this article. Philomena was one of thousands of Irish women who were forced by religious beliefs and societal pressures to hide their “sin”. However, what happened to some of the children who did not get adopted?
If the idea of watching your 3-year-old son being driven away from you is not horrifying enough, a recent disclosure out of Ireland exemplifies what happened to many of the children born out-of-wedlock and forced to live in these religious orders homes. “The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child abuse after a researcher found records for 796 young children allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.
The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that the former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children” Reader Supported News Evidence indicates that the septic tank was renovated to be used as a burial crypt.
We have to remember that this sad find was uncovered by a researcher and not disclosed by the Irish Catholic Church or officials from the religious order that ran the home. It is also important to note that this is just one of the many church run mother-child homes run in Ireland.
The Church or the religious orders that ran these institutions were considered the place of last resort for these women who, in most cases, were too poor to go elsewhere or to buy themselves out of the arrangement. Unfortunately, the homes were not maintained just for charitable reasons. It seems that the homes were paid by the government for each mother and each child being taken care of and then there were the adoption “fees”.
“Such was the power of the church, and of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns. For them it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence. At the time young Anthony Lee was born, I discovered that the Irish government was paying the Catholic church a pound a week for every woman in its care, and two shillings and sixpence for every baby. And that was not all.
After giving birth, the girls were allowed to leave the convent only if they or their family could pay the nuns £100. It was a substantial sum, and those who couldn’t afford it – the vast majority – were kept in the convent for three years, working in kitchens, greenhouses and laundries or making rosary beads and religious artefacts, while the church kept the profits from their labour. ” The Guardian
The women and their children were money makers for the religious orders and the Church. The adoption fees at the time were reported to be in the range of $2000-$3000 dollars which during those days was a large amount of money. I wish I could say that this was the end of a horrible story. However, if the above abuses were not enough, it has now been reported that at various mother child homes, secret and illegal drug testing was done on the children in residence there!
“Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.
Homes where children were secretly tested included Bessborough, in Co. Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, both of which are at the centre of the mass baby graves scandal. Other institutions where children may also have been vaccinated include Cork orphanages St Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys, run by the Presentation Brothers, and St Finbarr’s Industrial School for Girls, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
In Dublin, it is believed that children for the trials came from St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys, Cabra, and St Saviours’s Dominican Orphanage. But Mr Dwyer said: ‘What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg.
‘The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
‘However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.'” Reader Supported News
I realize that when all of these alleged travesties occurred the world was a different place for women and their babies born out-of-wedlock. However, why did it take researchers, through countless hours of research and the living victims of these mother child homes going public to uncover the truth?
I would assume that one of the questions the current Irish government will be asking is if these secret vaccination tests resulted in payments to these very same religious orders and the Irish Catholic Church.
I would think the Catholic Church of Ireland would have been doing its own research to try to get to the bottom of its seamy and relatively recent history. I wonder why not?
When Philomena Lee’s son returned to Sean Ross Abbey in the late 1990’s and suffering from an illness that would soon take his life, he pleaded with the Sisters at Sean Ross Abbey to tell him who his birth mother was and to help him find her, they rejected his plea. Maybe he didn’t offer enough money?
Philomena Lee has been able to forgive all of those who hid the truth from her and her son. I admire her ability to forgive, but at the same time, I don’t know how anyone could forgive these transgressions that went on for decades. And how many other mothers like Philomena and their sons and daughters are still searching? Shameful.
“The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.”
When is a common grave not good enough?
… When you’ve got a septic tank to hide the body in.
two comments eaten for brunch…
Born, raised and now ex-Catholic. (note for Nick Spinelli)
This and other incidents from this institution prove to me that organized Religions are vampire traps of the human soul. I read MATT 23 and I see the RCC in his headlights…
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/protest-held-outside-former-mother-and-baby-home-1.1825001”
“Mothers who lost babies at the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork tied teddy bears and toys to the gates of the building today as they stated their hope to be included in any form of inquiry the Government is now going to order.
The founder of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Support Group, Helen Murphy, who was born at the home and left when she was seven months old said the vigil was part of a larger campaign.
“We want the truth to be known. We want justice to be done and we want Bessborough to be included in any form of inquiry the Government is now going to order.
We founded the Bessborough Mother and Baby Support Group as an outlet for all those whose lives were affected by this place,” she said.
“The purpose of it is to remember the people who were there and especially the babies who died.
“But also to remember all of the mothers who gave birth there. We want to add our voice to the call for an inquiry into what went on at the mother and baby homes, how many babies died and where are those babies buried. We want answers.”
John Barrett who was born at Bessborough in the early 1950s said he considered those children buried in Bessborough, Tuam, Roscrea and Castlepollard to be his brothers and sisters.
“I want their voices to be heard after all these years. I want the truth to be known and some dignity to be given to them.” “
Nick Spinelli
Nothing like a nice Sunday for Catholic bashing. ALL organized religions have their shame. ALL!! Atheists have as much, if not more shame than any organized religion. Plenty of sanctimony here. “Let he who is w/o sin cast the first stone.”
= = =
Is this a case of bashing the bashers gone mad?
I’m with Elaine M.
Swarthmore mom,
Thanks for the update. It seems the only thing that she is concerned with is that all 796 children that died may not be in the tank. It seems that no one has of yet gone in there to verify the amount, other than some boys years ago who first discovered the bones.
Elaine, Thanks for the retrieval.
NO ONE has been harder on the church here vis a vis the Catholic priest scandals than me. And, I like this post. I DETEST the sanctimony of the atheists and non Catholics piling on in the comment section. Some of the comments are dripping w/ ignorance. sanctimony and selective memory. I have said here the main driving force behind the outrage of the Catholic priest scandal were good Catholics, betrayed by their Church. However, there were more than a few people who could not give a rat’s ass about the victims[mostly boys], but just saw it as an opportunity to bash Catholics. I see some of the same here.
Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, North Korea, THERE ARE MORE, but I’ll leave it there so as not to embar ASS you too much.
Spinelli…. ‘Atheists have as much guilt, or more, than the Catholickass Church’??? Funny, I don’t know a single Atheist who ever killed any children… Who are you, the new ”Bill Donahue”???? Get real. The Catholick Church has been a ‘STAIN’ on the human race for 2,000 years!!!!!!!
Telling the truth about what happened to unwed mothers and their children who were left in the care of the Catholic Church in Ireland years ago isn’t bashing the church. Would it be better to hide the truth…and not to acknowledge what happened?
These churches had the bible for a long time. They added doctrines and authority of men. They think they know it all and are ready for the rapture. Don’t bet on it.
Luk 12:46 The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
Luk 12:47 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
Luk 12:48 But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required:
and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.
Paulette Williams. I am not.
When it was time for my mother to deliver me, her doctor had hospital privileges at a nearby hospital which primarily housed Unwed Mothers. Years later, my mother told me of the terrible screams she heard coming from the young girls who were birthing since it was the practice not to give those girls any anesthesia to lessen their pain. This was their punishment for shaming their families.
Anyone feel nostalgic for “the good old days?”
Nick & Steve,
I retrieved your comments from the spam filter.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393 The researcher who discovered the graves says that although 796 died at St. Mary’s, the nature of their burials has been misrepresented.
I’m not Catholic, but that’s irrelevant.
No sarcasm here, I’m genuinely interested: Why is there so much disgust/disdain for the Catholic Church amongst progressives?
(I know the obvious one – the church’s’ view on abortion. As well as the second, the revelation of Catholic Priests and they’re abuse of boys.)
The first I get amongst progressives. The second, I understand, but the Catholic Church pales in comparison to other organized groups throughout the world that rape and sodomized children.
The majority of Catholics in the US vote left. The new Pope is certainly left leaning. A true hero to the left – JFK was Catholic. (Even though he was a conservative.)
As I said, just wondering given the collectively political leanings of the Church here in the US.
Thanks, Larry. I had read about this horrific story and was doing some research on it for a post–but have been having a lot of problems with my Internet connectivity today. So glad you wrote a column on the subject.
*****
Galway historian reveals truth behind 800 orphans in mass grave
Cahir O’Doherty
June 01,2014
http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Galway-historian-reveals-truth-behind-800-orphans-in-mass-grave.html?page=2
Excerpt:
Now a local historian has stepped forward to outline the terrible circumstances around so many lost little lives.
Catherine Corless, the local historian and genealogist, remembers the Home Babies well. “They were always segregated to the side of regular classrooms,” Corless tells IrishCentral. “By doing this the nuns telegraphed the message that they were different and that we should keep away from them.
“They didn’t suggest we be nice to them. In fact if you acted up in class some nuns would threaten to seat you next to the Home Babies. That was the message we got in our young years,” Corless recalls.
Now a dedicated historian of the site, as a schoolgirl Corless recalls watching an older friend wrap a tiny stone inside a bright candy wrapper and present it as a gift to one of them.
“When the child opened it she saw she’d been fooled,” Corless says. “Of course I copied her later and I tried to play the joke on another little Home girl. I thought it was funny at the time.”
But later – years later – Corless realized that the children she taunted had nobody. “Years after I asked myself what did I do to that poor little girl that never saw a sweet? That has stuck with me all my life. A part of me wants to make up to them.”
Surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, Tuam, County Galway locals say that they saw little to nothing of the daily life of The Home or of the pregnant young mothers who arrived and left it without a word over the decades.
In the few surviving black and white photographs taken at the site no child is smiling. Instead they simply frown at the camera, their blank stares suggesting the terrible conditions.
A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.
The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.
Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution.
In The Home’s 36 years of operation between 1926 and 1961 some locals told the press this week of unforgettable interactions with its emaciated children, who because of their “sinful” origins were considered socially radioactive and treated as such.
One local said: “I remember some of them in class in the Mercy Convent in Tuam – they were treated marginally better than the traveler children. They were known locally as the “Home Babies.” For the most part the children were usually gone by school age – either adopted or dead.”
Help please. I had a comment eaten. Thank you.
Nothing like a nice Sunday for Catholic bashing. ALL organized religions have their shame. ALL!! Atheists have as much, if not more shame than any organized religion. Plenty of sanctimony here. “Let he who is w/o sin cast the first stone.”