Sean Ross Abbey: 'It's another Bessborough...it should be highlighted what happened'

Tina Dooley has opened up about her experience of Sean Ross Abbey for the first time 

The Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Tipperary.

A woman who was born in the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home has opened up about her experience as a monument in memory of the children who died there is set to be unveiled.

Tina Dooley, alongside Michael Donovan, Bridget Maher, and Maureen Sullivan, designed the four-and-a-half-foot-high black marble monument for the 1,090 children.

Carrying the outline of a pregnant mother, Ms Dooley said the idea first came during a sleep-out on the grounds in Tipperary last year.

"An artist designed a canvas for it, and we used that design of the lady on it, it is poignant to the message we want out there. That is, the women went in pregnant and most of them came out without their babies," she told the Irish Examiner.

“We are not a group, we are friends and campaigners, and we are doing this to keep what happened at Sean Ross Abbey highlighted.

“It is another Tuam, it is another Bessborough. And I do believe it should be highlighted what happened here and when we are dead and gone it will be remembered”.

Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea was run by the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who also ran Bessborough and Castlepollard. It is now privately owned and currently operates as an Ipas centre. 

The building was made famous in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena, which told the story of Philomena Lee whose son Anthony was taken away in a forced adoption, and she never saw him again.

Ms Dooley was born in Sean Ross Abbey in 1963 and spent 15 months of her life there with her late mother, Phyliss Roche.

She said he mother was 27 when she first went into Sean Ross Abbey and Ms Dooley had to be either put up for adoption or be bought out.

Ms Dooley said her uncle travelled from the UK and bought her and her mother out for IR£300.

"He had to sign an affidavit for the nuns and give them the money."

She said a priest who was a friend of her grandfather's "collected my mother in work the day before I was born and signed her into Sean Ross Abbey under a pseudoname. He was paid two pounds 15 shillings and four pence for my mother to go in".

“My mother kept me and reared me herself until she died. I was nearly 12 when mam died, and then my grandmother took over”.

Ms Dooley is telling her story for the first time because she does not want to “live in the past”.

Tina Dooley who was born in Sean Ross Abbey in 1963.

She said her children know her story and that it is not hidden. "I don’t want them carrying it," she said.

“There is so much hatred and intergenerational trauma, horrific things have been done to people, but at the same time I just feel, you can’t live your life in the past. I never wanted to.”

When Ms Dooley turned 60, she told her husband she was going to visit Sean Ross Abbey after reading Maureen Sullivan’s book Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries.

“I got in touch with her, and she put me in touch with Michael Donovan, who is a campaigner for Sean Ross Abbey.

“He showed me around, and it meant nothing to me to be honest; I didn’t feel anything when I went into that house in Roscrea.

“It wasn’t emotional in any sense until I went to the Angel’s Plot. I saw the 14-year-old’s grave. To think a child gave birth to a child, and she died. It broke me. That is why I got involved, but it was very much as a campaigner with friends."

The new monument will be unveiled on Saturday, August 29, at 2pm on the grounds of Sean Ross Abbey.

The unveiling comes as campaigners have urged that renewed public attention on burials at the former Bessborough Mother and Baby Home must not overshadow the hundreds of babies who remain unaccounted for at the Roscrea institution.

Anne Connolly, a survivor of Sean Ross Abbey, said families are still waiting for answers about the burial places of the women and children there.

“The focus on Bessborough is important,” said Ms Connolly, who describes herself as “one of the lucky ones to have survived”.

“It is important though, that Sean Ross Abbey is not forgotten. Every one of those children mattered, and every family deserves to know where their baby is buried.”