Girls pregnant due to rape put in Bessborough in 1980s

Underage girls, pregnant as a result of rape, ended up in Cork’s Bessborough Mother and Baby Home into the 1980s. The ages are revealed in maternity registers kept by the order which ran the home and released under Freedom of Information.

In 1968, a 12-year-old girl was transferred from Bessborough to St Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork, where her child was stillborn in January, as a result of “ante-partum haemorrhage”.

Maternity Record Book 40 lists a girl of 14 whose child was stillborn in 1982. The record simply states that the child “premature 33wks, gasped and died”.