Fear and foreboding among survivors as Mother and Baby Home report is published

Philomena Lee: 'Irish people owe it to the memory of those mothers and children, who have died, without knowing the truth and to resolve that such atrocities will never be allowed to happen again.' Picture:Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Institutional survivors are expected to greet the report by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation with a mixture of fear and foreboding.

Leaked details in a Sunday newspaper may have confirmed some of their worst fears.

Chief among those is concern over how much –or little – the commission investigated illegal or forced adoptions.

Added to that is concern that while individual congregations or orders of nuns will be the subject of criticism, the State and the Catholic Church will get off relatively lightly.

Children’s Minister Roderic O'Gorman has said it will “make difficult reading for everybody”.

A new webpage with information specifically for former residents of Mother and Baby Homes has been set up at: https://t.co/1Csk3S1RRI

Additional mental health supports provided by the HSE are also available to former residents https://t.co/rlIZLVD4mu

— Roderic O’Gorman TD (@rodericogorman) January 10, 2021

And he has said that while it “sheds light on the failure of Government, of the State, of the Church”, it also puts blame on society for what happened.

The main areas it will focus on are the living conditions for mothers and babies and the way they were treated in the homes.

Mortality rates have been examined and the report will say some 9,000 children died in the homes, which is a higher death toll than many had expected.

How those deaths were recorded and how bodies were disposed of will also be a big issue.

So too will be how children were used in various vaccine trials.

The commission also looked into the issue of consent in relation to legal adoptions that took place after 1952.

This will be hugely controversial as it is estimated that as many as 15,000 children may have been illegally or forcefully given up for adoption or “trafficked”.

The report will also look at the way children from ethnic minorities were treated.

The report, which was submitted to Mr O'Gorman last October, will include the testimonies of people who lived and worked in 14 mother-and-baby homes and four of the country’s county homes between 1922 and 1998.

There will be sections of the report devoted to each of the 18 homes investigated.

One of the main ones will be St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, which was owned by Galway County Council and run by the Bon Secours Nuns.

Campaigner and historian Catherine Corless’s research established that 796 children were buried in a septic tank at the home.

But while what she uncovered sent shockwaves across the globe when it broke in 2014, Tuesday’s report could shed new light on what happened at the former Mother and Baby Home at Bessborough in Cork city.

As Ms Corless told the Irish Examiner late last year, she believes that similar burial practices to Tuam were carried out in Bessborough in the 1940s and 1950s.

She said she feared hundreds of babies could be buried in pits or tanks on the 200-acre estate on the city’s southside, where at least 904 babies are known to have died.

Last year, in an interim report, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes found that some 900 children died while in the care of the nuns at Bessborough, or in hospital after being transferred from the home.

But it said the burial place of more than 800 of the children is unknown.

Ms Corless has also said the Government should delay the publication of today's report to allow survivors more time to digest it

Ms Corless said the leaking of the details has “broken the trust” between survivors and the Government.

Philomena Lee, who spent time in Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, has called for Mother and Baby Homes survivors to be paid compensation for their “unbearable suffering and loss”.

She added: “Irish people owe it to the memory of those mothers and children, who have died, without knowing the truth and to resolve that such atrocities will never be allowed to happen again.”

She said she has “waited decades” for the report into the Mother and Baby Homes.

It is, she said, the moment when Ireland reveals how tens of thousands of “unmarried mothers and beloved children”, such as her son Anthony, were “torn asunder”.

Our confidential & professionally staffed helpline will be open 9.30am-4.30pm each day from tomr, Tues 12th Jan. Call (01) 454 63 88 or email at [e-mail] if you need to talk to someone. #MotherAndBabyHomes pic.twitter.com/izlFVMawBu

— Barnardos Ireland (@Barnardos_IRL) January 11, 2021

This happened, she said, simply because they were unmarried at the moment their children were born.

Adoption Rights Alliance co-founder Susan Lohan has said survivors like her fear the commission will “have ignored the main issues of family destruction, social engineering, ethnic cleansing or trafficking that were at the core of the homes”.

She noted that the report appears to have “instead focused on less serious issues such as poor diet, enforced labour".

“Although these are serious issues if looked at in isolation, no survivor ever led with narratives of their daily routines over the loss of their mother or child,” she said.