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.”
The movie Belle is based on a true story. However, important fictions were made in the movie to make it more dramatic. The only movie I have ever seen that was based on true events and did not change the script to fit the writers’ idea of dramatic tension was Tora! Tora! Tora!
They followed the teachings of the Church, Paul. Who cares how they were funded.
Annie – they were not funded by the Church, but rather were run by nuns who were connected to the Church. Today we would call them a 501c3. They made their money by selling the labor of the girls to do the laundry. There was no charitable money coming in from the Church or elsewhere.
bill mcwilliams
I’m so very sorry. I hope you have found abundant happiness.
Elaine
Thank you for posting this sad, sad history.
I remember my mother getting a small religious gift from Ireland and treasuring it since it was made by those ‘wonderful Sisters’. Another myth – dashed.
Who here is silly enough to think all nuns come from the same order?
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/archbishop-of-tuam-warns-of-bad-shepherds-1.1825025 ” Archbishop of Tuam Dr Michael Neary made no specific reference to the controversy surrounding the former Bon Secours mother and babies home when he celebrated the ordination of a Castlebar man as priest yesterday.
Dr Neary, who stated last week that the archdiocese would co-operate with any inquiry, has said that it did not have any involvement in the running of the home in Tuam and had no records in its archives.
“There exists a clear moral imperative on the Bon Secours sisters in this case to act upon their responsibilities in the interest of the common good,” Dr Neary said.”
Walmart announced that it would take responsibility for the accident its truck was in that injured an actor, if it was found it was at fault. That is what the Archbishop is doing. Asking for a neutral examination and if the Church is at fault, they will take it. But unlike this blog, he would like to get all the facts out first.
Paul, they were run under the auspices of the Catholic Church.
Paul:
It is beginning to sound as if this entire story is fictional except for the deaths of the children.
Some people never miss an opportunity for propaganda. Just like the people claiming Obama said “Order and Progress Can Only Come When Individuals Surrender Their Rights to an All-Powerful Sovereign.”
Then they post a 20 second video totally out of context. I dont agree with the President’s politics/philosophy but holy sh*t, that is just inexcusable. This story has the same smell.
I am not accusing rafflaw of propaganda but I do think he could have done a little better job with his research. But with that being said, there is a story and a reason why those children died.
“Let he who is w/o sin cast the first stone.”
Not bad advice. Too bad it doesn’t apply to Bowe Bergdahl.
Paul C. While not documentaries, the movies are based on true stories.
How do you know how they were placed in the septic tank Paul? Crypt, tank, whatever. Where they placed in individual little boxes? Or were they haphazardly placed in there, one on top of another? Why do you think they weren’t dumped in there?
They were not entered in the documentary section of the Academy Awards SWM. There are a couple of documentaries on the subject, but at least one is considered by some to be fictional.
Paul, Those movies are not fictional.
Catholic leader seeks Irish probe into mass graves
By Associated Press
June 8, 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/catholic-leader-seeks-irish-probe-into-mass-graves/2014/06/08/ea8bb1b4-ef3a-11e3-ba99-4469323d5076_story.html
Excerpt:
DUBLIN — Ireland should investigate the Catholic Church’s mistreatment and burial of babies who died decades ago in nun-operated homes for unmarried mothers, a senior church official declared Sunday as the country confronted another shameful chapter of its history of child abuse.
Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin made his appeal following revelations that hundreds of children who died inside a former church-run residence for infants were buried in unmarked graves at the site in western Ireland.
Martin said the probe should have no church involvement, be led by a judge and examine the treatment of children in “mother and baby homes” for unwed mothers and their newborns. These mostly operated in Ireland from the 1920s to 1960s, when Catholic policy and control of social services reached their zenith in post-independence Ireland.
Typically, the women’s families and wider society had shamed and rejected them because of their pregnancies. Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.
“The children’s names, ages, places of birth and causes of death were recorded. The average number of deaths over the 36-year period was just over 22 a year. The information recorded on these State- issued certificates has been seen by The Irish Times; the children are marked as having died variously of tuberculosis, convulsions, measles, whooping cough, influenza, bronchitis and meningitis, among other illnesses.
The deaths of these 796 children are not in doubt. Their numbers are a stark reflection of a period in Ireland when infant mortality in general was very much higher than today, particularly in institutions, where infection spread rapidly. At times during those 36 years the Tuam home housed more than 200 children and 100 mothers, plus those who worked there, according to records Corless has found.
What has upset, confused and dismayed her in recent days is the speculative nature of much of the reporting around the story, particularly about what happened to the children after they died. “I never used that word ‘dumped’,” she says again, with distress. “I just wanted those children to be remembered and for their names to go up on a plaque. That was why I did this project, and now it has taken [on] a life of its own.”” http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393?page=1
They were not ‘dumped’ in a septic tank, but rather is was re-purposed as a burial crypt.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318411/
nick
what’s your point, the story hurts your feelings so it shouldn’t be told?
or is it “oh yeah, but look what they did”.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/investigation-into-child-vaccine-trial-halted-in-2004-1.1825261“The 58 children came from mother and baby homes at Bessborough, Cork, at Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, at Dunboyne and Stamullen, Co Meath, at St Patrick’s on Navan Road, Dublin, and at Mount Carmel Industrial School in Moate, Co Westmeath.
At the time, Prof Meenan held the chair of microbiology in UCD. He was responsible for importing the vaccines used in the trials and was one of six authors of a study of the results reported in the British Medical Journal.
Decision criticised
Finding in his favour, the Supreme Court implicitly criticised the decision to ask the commission to examine the vaccine trials issue in the first place.
Mr Justice Ronan Keane said these trials “appear to have only the most tenuous connection, if any, with the appalling social evil of the sexual and physical abuse of children in institutions, which was the specific area into which the commission was established to inquire”. “
Karen It must be the whole movie. I thought it was a preview, I saw the movie and it was very good.
If I remember correctly, both the Magdalene Sisters and Philomena are considered fiction films. I have seen both. Of the two, Magdalene Sisters in the better film, but more propagandistic. It is clear the film maker has a big axe to grind.