Ireland’s maternity and baby home victims seek criminal investigation

Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheal Martin has apologized to the victims of the maternity and baby homes scandal, admitting the state has failed after a report found 9,000 children had died in the facilities over seven decades.

The Taoiseach had previously been accused of “whitewashing” the findings by activists who said the report shifted the blame from those who continued the houses to society at large.

But he deeply apologized on Wednesday on behalf of the Irish government and told the victims: “Each of you is blameless, each of you has done nothing wrong and has nothing to be ashamed of.”

Speaking to the Irish Parliament, the Dail, Mr Martin said: “I apologize for the shame and stigma they have faced, which some remain a burden to this day.

“With my apology, I want to emphasize that each of you has been in an institution because of the injustice of others.”

The Taoiseach has been criticized by activists and politicians such as People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who described the report and government response as “fraud, insult”.

But Mr Martin formally apologized on Wednesday, saying that the government would implement the recommendations of the commission.

He said: “The Irish state, as the main funding agency for the majority of these institutions, had the ultimate ability to exercise control over these institutions, in addition to its due diligence of protecting citizens with a solid system of regulation and inspection.

That power has not been exercised and the government’s duty of care has not been respected.

“The state has abandoned you, the mothers and children in these houses.”

The 2,865-page document released on Tuesday lifted the lid on years of home abuse for unmarried and pregnant Irish women, but was deemed “incomplete” and “exclusion”.

The independent report found that the facilities for women who became pregnant out of wedlock caused high levels of child mortality, misogyny and stigma among some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Mr Martin said a number of memorial, educational and research commitments will support national reflection and lasting remembrance.

The government promised to put in place information and traceability laws and a range of support measures to give survivors access to personal information.

Mr. Martin added: “We have to learn the lesson that institutionalization creates power structures and abuse of power and must never again be an option for our country.

“In this report, former residents speak of a sense of shame for the situation they found themselves in. The shame wasn’t theirs – it was ours.”

Mr Martin has indicated that he could force homes to pay redress to victims – including women who were molested there and children who were forcibly adopted from their mothers, while lawmaker Brid Smith launched a “full criminal investigation” into the scandal has demanded.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar told the Dail on Wednesday: “This report reveals the appalling consequences of such a mindset. Too many children were viewed as a stain on society, but the truth is, it was our society that was deeply stained.

As the report shows, this was a suffocating, oppressive, and deeply misogynistic culture. A cold house for most of his people.

‘The statistics were known at the time. It was known that children in maternal and baby facilities are more likely to die in infancy than other children, including other children born out of wedlock.

‘There was no public outcry, no dail debates or motions, no media inquiries or interests.

“These were second class citizens, lesser mortals, who should be treated as such, perhaps for their entire lives, based solely on the circumstances of their conception and birth. It was a conspiracy of shame, silence, and cruelty. ‘

The report revealed, among other things, the “appalling” death rates among the youngest – more than one in ten children.

Some of the facilities were owned and operated by the local health authorities – Pelletstown, Tuam, and Kilrush County Homes.

Others belonged to and were led by religious orders. For example the three houses run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Bessborough, Sean Ross and Castlepollard (the Houses of the Sacred Heart).

Many of the women suffered emotional abuse and were often subjected to slurs and derogatory remarks, according to the commission’s report.

Mr. Boyd Barrett accused Mr. Martin and the government of “very deliberate” attempts to reduce the guilt and to disperse the responsibility of the institutions of the Church and the State.

He told the Dail, “The government’s report and official political commentary … look like a deception, an insult and a whitewash of the gross crimes committed against thousands of women and babies.

‘The report and some of your comments [on Tuesday] seemed very conscious of trying to reduce the guilt of the institutions of the church and the state and to dispel responsibility for the crimes committed against society as a whole. ‘

Boyd Barrett said there was a “systematic attempt” not to treat survivors’ statements as evidence of abuse.

Some of the passages in the report are quite frankly offensive when it comes to turning the blame off the institutions of the church and the state, establishing a hierarchy of gravity of abuse between one institution and another, and constantly refraining from doing what is offensive that there is no evidence, ”he said.

“Are 9,000 children dying in proportions that far exceed the number of dying in society as a whole and are not in themselves evidence of abuse? Wasn’t it a prison sentence for every single woman who was forced to go in there? There is no evidence of illegal adoptions when we have evidence.

“There appears to be a systematic attempt not to treat survivors’ testimonies as evidence.”

But Mr Martin said it was “wrong” to claim that a systematic approach was taken. ‘There is not. I wasn’t part of the commission, good, bad or indifferent, ”he said.

“The commission was independent,” he added. No politician had any hand, act or role in the deliberations of the commission itself. I think you have to accept that. ‘

Mr. Martin also said the report and its recommendations were “very clear” that the mothers should not have ended up in these houses and that the government’s response to the recommendations was “survivors’ led”.

Mr Martin said the report had been sent to the Irish Public Prosecutor to investigate possible criminal consequences that could result from it.

However, the long span of the report, which covered the time from the founding of the Irish state in 1922 to the closing of the last houses in 1998, can be difficult.

“Obviously, a considerable amount of time has passed on a considerable part of the problems in the report,” said Martin.

“Even so, the Gardai can obviously track some of these issues and deal with the others.”

Mr Martin said the commission’s investigation report, released Tuesday, described a “dark, difficult and shameful chapter” in Irish history.

Breeda Murphy, a survival group volunteer, told the Irish examiner that it would take months to save the report’s findings.

“I wish I could say it’s a sense of relief, but it’s not overwhelming in the darkness we had hoped would lift,” she said.

Anna Corrigan, whose two brothers John and William Dolan are believed to have died in a house in Tuam, said Tuesday that her “heart breaks for any survivor”.

“We expect, as we always expected, truth, justice, accountability leading to law enforcement if they arise and reimbursement for survivors,” she said.

Another group, the Coalition of Maternal and Child Survivors, said the report was “really shocking” but “fundamentally incomplete”.

The group said it was a “police officer” to blame for the social attitudes prevailing at the time and said the government and church should be held accountable.

Mr. Martin had said the report“opens a window to a deeply misogynistic culture in Ireland over several decades”.“What is described in this report has not been imposed on us by any foreign power. We did that to ourselves as a society, ”he said.

“We had a completely distorted attitude towards sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for this dysfunction.”

Another group, Irish First Mothers, said the report “freed both church and state from any systemic responsibility for what it admits is the effective imprisonment of pregnant mothers.”

The Church operated many of Ireland’s social services during the 20th century. While they were run by nuns, the houses received state funding and were also state regulated as adoption agencies.

While Irish voters have largely approved abortion and gay marriage in referendums in recent years, the scandal has rekindled fears of how women and children were treated in the not-too-distant past.

Politician Brid Smith said a government apology was “just not good enough” and urged the relevant institutions to have their assets confiscated in order to aid survivors.

“We have heard excuses many times, but now we need to act,” she said.

“There are tens of thousands of babies who have been molested, and there are thousands upon thousands whose bodies are on the premises of facilities across the country,” she said.

“Something went terribly wrong and it needs to be investigated,” she said.

Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman today denied claims that the government was trying to impose responsibility for the scandal on society.

He said, “I don’t think the Taoiseach or anyone in the government is trying to enforce or divert responsibility in any way. That’s why the excuse comes.

“The fact that the Taoiseach apologizes today on behalf of the state makes it very clear that this government, on behalf of the state, takes responsibility for the shortcomings that are clearly evident in this report.”

Amnesty International has also called for a criminal investigation, stating that it is “the state, not society in the broader sense, that is primarily responsible for the abuses”.

“The infant mortality rates at these facilities compared to society at the time and the number of unregistered deaths and burials are extremely shocking,” the charity said

“We support calls for this and other serious abuses to be brought before a criminal investigation.”

The Commission of Inquiry into Mothers and Baby Homes (CIMBH) found a “worrying” infant mortality rate in the facilities that only started operating in 1998.

Children born in the institutions were often separated from their mothers and put up for adoption, breaking all family ties.

According to the report, the in-home mortality rate was twice that of illegitimate children in general, which was already “significantly higher” than that of children born in wedlock.

In the years before 1960, mother and baby homes did not save the lives of illegitimate children. In fact, they seem to have significantly reduced their chances of survival, ”investigators said.

An earlier investigation, the results of which were presented to the commission, quoted a witness who said: “If you left without the nuns’ permission, you would be brought back from Lake Garda.”

“While I was in Bessborough I can remember at least one woman who tried to leave without the nuns’ permission and was brought back from Lake Garda. Another woman tried to escape from a very high window, but she fell and unfortunately died, “said the witness.

The same woman recalled that “in early February 1968, when my baby was six to seven weeks old, he was torn from my breast by one of the nuns while I was breastfeeding and taking him for adoption.”

Tuesday’s report added that many women in the homes had suffered “emotional abuse” with some evidence of physical abuse.

“It appears that they have been shown little kindness, and this was particularly the case with childbirth,” the report said.

‘The large institutions were regulated and were insufficiently staffed until the later decades. The atmosphere seems cold and seemingly unkind. ‘

The CIMBH surveyed the houses over a period of 76 years through 1998 and found that 9,000 children died in them, or 15 percent of those who walked through the houses.

According to the report, 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through the homes examined.

Many of the women received little or no prenatal care.

The report did not provide a single explanation for the deaths but said, “The main identifiable causes … were respiratory infections and gastroenteritis.”

It also highlighted a total of seven unethical vaccine trials on children in the facilities between 1934 and 1973.

Meanwhile, women from this period who were born out of wedlock have been “treated particularly harshly” by families and partners.

The CIMBH was founded in 2015 after an amateur historian uncovered evidence of a potential mass grave of infants in one such house in Tuam city.

The then Taoiseach Enda Kenny described the tomb in Tuam as the “Chamber of Secrets”.

“Nuns Treated 11-Year-Old Rape Victims Like Prostitutes”: How Schoolgirls Were Among 56,000 Mothers Sent to Hellish Irish Homes, Where 9,000 Babies died and bodies were buried in shoeboxes – when survivors slammed the “cop-out” report

By Helen Bruce and Az Munrallee and Craig Hughes, political correspondent for the Irish Daily Mail

Girls, aged 12, were among the 56,000 mothers in Ireland’s maternity and baby homes whose harrowing experiences were exposed by the worrying report released yesterday.

She and her children have been exposed to very high infant mortality rates, poor nutrition, overcrowded bedrooms and emotional abuse.

However, the commission of inquiry does not blame the church or the state and also points to families and fathers who have turned their backs on unmarried pregnant women.

Ireland was found to have been a cold, harsh environment for many over the past century, but especially cold and harsh for women. It says: “All women were severely discriminated against. Women who gave birth out of wedlock were treated particularly harshly.

“The responsibility for this harsh treatment rests primarily with the fathers of their children and their own immediate families.

It was supported, contributed to and tolerated by the institutions of the state and the churches. It must be recognized, however, that the institutions examined provided refuge – in some cases hard refuge – when families did not provide refuge at all. “

The Commission’s final report found that while maternity and baby homes were not a particularly Irish phenomenon, the proportion of Irish unmarried mothers admitted to such homes or county homes in the 20th century was “probably the highest in the world”.

It was reported that there were about 56,000 unmarried mothers and about 57,000 children in the 14 maternity and baby homes and four county homes examined by the commission.

Most of these recordings were made in the 1960s and early 1970s. The commission said it was likely there were an additional 25,000 unmarried mothers and larger numbers of children in other county homes that were not screened.

The age of the women was between 12 and 40 years. The majority, 80%, were between 18 and 29 years old, but 5,616, 11.4%, were under 18 years old.

Die Kommission sagte, die Zahl der unter 18-Jährigen sei Anfang der 1960er Jahre stark gestiegen und habe in den nächsten zwei Jahrzehnten ein hohes Niveau erreicht.

Einige Schwangerschaften waren das Ergebnis von Vergewaltigungen; Einige Frauen hatten psychische Probleme, andere eine geistige Behinderung “, heißt es in dem Bericht.

Die Mehrheit war jedoch nicht von den meisten irischen Frauen ihrer Zeit zu unterscheiden. Der einzige Unterschied zwischen den Frauen in Mutter- und Babyheimen und ihren Schwestern, Klassenkameraden und Arbeitsgefährten bestand darin, dass sie unverheiratet schwanger wurden.

„Ihr Leben wurde durch Schwangerschaften außerhalb der Ehe und die Reaktionen des Vaters ihres Kindes, ihrer unmittelbaren Familien und der breiteren Gemeinschaft beeinträchtigt.

„Frauen wurden in Mutter- und Babyheime sowie in Bezirksheime aufgenommen, weil sie die Unterstützung ihrer Familie und des Vaters ihres Kindes nicht sicherstellen konnten.

Sie waren gezwungen, das Haus zu verlassen und einen Ort zu suchen, an dem sie bleiben konnten, ohne bezahlen zu müssen. Viele waren mittellos. ‘

Frauen, die befürchteten, dass die Folgen ihrer Schwangerschaft ihrer Familie und ihren Nachbarn bekannt werden könnten, betraten die Häuser, um ihre Privatsphäre zu schützen. Einige reisten aus demselben Grund nach Großbritannien, wurden jedoch häufig von den britischen Behörden zur Rückkehr gezwungen.

Die Kommission sagte, die Profile der Frauen in den Häusern hätten sich im Laufe der Jahrzehnte geändert, was Veränderungen im Leben der irischen Frauen widerspiegelte.

In den ersten Jahrzehnten waren die meisten zugelassenen Frauen Hausangestellte oder Landarbeiter oder verrichteten unbezahlte Hausarbeit in ihrem Familienheim. In späteren Jahren waren jedoch viele Büroangestellte, Beamte, berufstätige Frauen und Schülerinnen oder Schülerinnen der dritten Stufe.

„Es gibt keine Hinweise darauf, dass Frauen von kirchlichen oder staatlichen Behörden gezwungen wurden, Mutter- und Babyheime zu betreten. Die meisten Frauen hatten keine Alternative «, heißt es in dem Bericht.

Viele schwangere, alleinstehende Frauen kontaktierten das Ministerium für Kommunalverwaltung und öffentliche Gesundheit, später das Gesundheitsministerium, ihre örtliche Gesundheitsbehörde oder eine katholische Wohltätigkeitsorganisation, die Hilfe suchte, weil sie nirgendwo hingehen konnten und kein Geld hatten.

Frauen wurden auch von ihren Eltern oder anderen Familienmitgliedern ohne Rücksprache in Mutter- und Babyheime gebracht. In dem Bericht heißt es: „In vielen Fällen wurden sie von der Welt abgeschnitten und einigen wurde ein‚ Hausname ‘zugewiesen. Die Häuser gaben Frauen die Gewissheit, dass „ihr Geheimnis geschützt werden würde“.

Bis zu 9.000 Kinder starben zwischen 1922 und der Schließung des letzten solchen Heims im Jahr 1998 in 18 Einrichtungen. Die Kommission sagte, die sehr hohe Kindersterblichkeitsrate, definiert als Tod innerhalb des ersten Lebensjahres eines Babys, sei wahrscheinlich das beunruhigendste Merkmal von diese Institutionen ‘.

Die Sterblichkeitsrate bei „unehelichen“ Kindern war immer erheblich höher als bei „legitimen“ Kindern, war jedoch in den Haushalten von Mutter und Kind noch höher.

Zwischen 1945 und 1946 war die Sterblichkeitsrate in den Häusern fast doppelt so hoch wie im nationalen Durchschnitt für „uneheliche“ Kinder.

In den untersuchten Einrichtungen starben etwa 9.000 Kinder, etwa 15% aller Kinder, die in den Häusern lebten.

In den Jahren vor 1960 retteten Mutter- und Babyheime nicht das Leben von „unehelichen“ Kindern. Tatsächlich scheinen sie ihre Überlebenschancen erheblich verringert zu haben “, heißt es in dem Bericht.

Es fügte hinzu, dass die sehr hohen Sterblichkeitsraten den lokalen und nationalen Behörden zu dieser Zeit bekannt waren und in offiziellen Veröffentlichungen aufgezeichnet wurden.

Die hohen Sterblichkeitsraten wurden von der Kommission auf die schlechte Ernährung ihrer Mütter während der Schwangerschaft, den Mangel an Schwangerschaftsvorsorge, wenn sie erst kurz vor der Geburt aufgenommen wurden, und die beengten Verhältnisse in den Häusern zurückgeführt, die die Ausbreitung von Infektionen ermöglichten .

Schlechte Hygienestandards in vielen Heimen, ein Mangel an professioneller medizinischer Ausbildung für religiöse Mitglieder und “eine allgemeine Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber dem Schicksal der Kinder, die in Mutter- und Babyheimen geboren wurden”, trugen zu der entsetzlichen Kindersterblichkeit bei. der Bericht sagte.

Was ist mit Überlebenden passiert?

Die “unehelichen” Kinder, die in den überlebenden Einrichtungen geboren wurden, wurden den größten Teil ihres Lebens lang diskriminiert, so die Kommission.

Most had no memory of their time there, but some stayed in the institutions after their mothers left and a small number were in institutions until the age of seven.

Before legal adoption was introduced in 1953, children who left the homes usually ended up in other institutions such as industrial schools or were boarded out or nursed out.

While many survivors have reported having their babies taken from them, the commission found little evidence of forced adoption.

It stated: ‘Some former residents and lobby groups have suggested that ‘adoption’ should be renamed ‘forced adoption’. The commission does not agree.

‘The commission found very little evidence that children were forcibly taken from their mothers; it accepts that the mothers did not have much choice but that is not the same as ‘forced’ adoption.’

The commission said the principle reason why adoption became so popular after it was formally introduced in 1953 was the lack of family and community support for mothers who wished to keep their child. Its availability also meant that women did not have to stay as long in the institutions.

It noted that until 1973, when the Unmarried Mother’s Allowance was introduced, most women had no realistic prospect of keeping their child, unless they were assisted by their family.

It also said that great care should be taken not to denigrate the families who adopted children from the institutions, believing it to be in the best interest of the child.

‘There is no doubt that the option of legal adoption was a vastly better outcome for the children involved than the previous informal adoption or nursed out arrangements, and it resulted in fewer children spending their early lives in an institution,’ the report said.

It said that 1,638 children who were resident in the mother and baby homes and county homes under investigation were placed for foreign adoption. The vast majority, 1,427, started new lives in the United States of America.

Conditions in the Homes

The report noted that there were different types of institutions with different governance, financial arrangements and practices.

Some were owned and run by the local health authorities, such as the county homes, Pelletstown, Tuam and Kilrush. Others were owned and run by religious orders, for example, the three homes run by the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary – Bessborough, Sean Ross and Castlepollard. The Bethany Home was founded by a Protestant evangelical group.

The commission observed that some of the county homes, like Kilrush and Tuam, had ‘appalling’ physical conditions.

Most county homes had no sanitation, no running water, heating and no place for children to play.

Such homes admitted women with special needs, mental health problems, venereal disease or a criminal conviction, who would be rejected by a number of mother and baby homes. They had children with special needs, including the children of married families.

‘The accommodation and care given to these children in county homes was grossly inadequate; some of the descriptions are extremely distressing,’ it said.

Conditions in the other mother and baby homes were considerably better and improved over time, it said. The women and children were subject to strict rules, but there was no evidence of the sort of gross abuse that occurred in industrial schools, with just a small number of complaints of physical abuse, the report said.

The women worked, but they were generally doing the sort of work that they would have done at home. However, women in county homes did arduous work for which they should have been paid.

Some county homes were unwilling to let women go after having their babies, preferring to keep the free labour.

Trauma and emotional abuse

Many women did suffer emotional abuse and were often subject to denigration and derogatory remarks. ‘It appears that there was little kindness shown to them, and this was particularly the case when they were giving birth,’ it said.

‘The atmosphere appears to have been cold and seemingly uncaring. They offered little sympathy or counselling to women who may have been rejected by their family and by the father of their child.

‘There were no qualified social workers, or counsellors attached to these homes until at least the 1970s, and until that time, there is no evidence that women were given opportunities to discuss the circumstances of their pregnancy or future options for their child.

‘Women were dissuaded from sharing their stories with fellow residents, because of concerns to protect their privacy.’

Many found childbirth traumatic. The overwhelming majority were first-time mothers and probably uninformed about childbirth.

‘First-time childbirth can be frightening for any woman; it was undoubtedly worse for women whose pregnancy had devastated their normal life and resulted in their removal from home, family and friends,’ it said.

‘The trauma of childbirth must have been especially difficult for the many women who had no prospect of keeping their child.’

Influence of the Church

Local authorities often deferred to the views of the religious orders that ran homes or the local bishop.

However, there was no evidence that the Catholic hierarchy played a role in the day-to-day running of mother and baby homes.

Yet their influence was strong. In one example, the Archbishop of Tuam objected to efforts to move the Tuam home to the outskirts of Galway in the late 1950s, as the new area was close to a busy road,

He said that homes must be in ‘a place that is quiet, remote and surrounded by high boundary walls’ He added: ‘In many cases they are on the look out to get in touch with men, and some of them cannot repress their excitement even when a man comes to the home to deliver a message.’

He was eventually overruled by the Health Minister.

Funding came first from local rates, and later general tax. The Commission said it saw no evidence that the religious orders made a profit running the homes.

‘At various times, it is clear that they struggled to make ends meet and their members were not always paid for their work,’ it said. ‘This was a particular problem when occupancy levels fell and women stayed for shorter periods. Payments by local authorities were not always on time.’

The capitation rates, while not generous, were more generous than welfare payments for an adult and a child in the community.

Under regulations, the women (or, if they were under 16, their parents) could have been charged for their stay in the homes, but this does not appear to have happened in most of the larger institutions. Residents in county homes were charged if they had an income.

The report said it was probable that the number of Irish unmarried mothers in mother and baby homes was the highest in the world.

Large numbers gave birth there in the 1970s, by which time most mother and baby homes in other countries had closed. The report said Ireland was not unique in believing illegitimacy should be regretted and disowned – it was a view shared by most countries in the early and mid-20th century.

Few men contributed to the maintenance of their child or acknowledged their existence. In the first half of the century many would have been unable to do so, because they were farm labourers or unpaid workers on family farms or in family businesses.