'The priest called me a tramp, looked up my skirt to check if I had knickers on, then banished me'

Helen Culpan was banished from her home in Castledermot, Co Kildare, to Dublin by her local priest when she became pregnant at the age of 17 after being raped by a neighbouring farmer. Photo: Patrick Browne

• This article is part of our Best of 2024 collection. It was originally published in August. Find more stories like this here.

A 90-year-old woman, who as a pregnant teenager had a priest look up her skirt to check if she was wearing underwear before sending her to a mother and baby home, said it is "humiliating" that she is still waiting for redress.

Helen Culpan from Co Carlow is one of 34,000 survivors who are entitled to a redress payment for the time they spent in one of the country's many mother and baby homes. The €800m scheme finally opened for applications on March 20 this year — three years after it was first promised by the State. 

Priority is to be given to elderly applicants, according to the Department of Children and Integration which is responsible for the scheme, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s. However, Helen Culpan is still awaiting her payment, and fears she may pass away before it is paid.

Helen Culpan: 'The priest abused my mother he shouted ‘get her out of here, and then he pulled up my skirt. I could not afford any knickers so no I did not have any on, if I’m being honest but most young girls in poverty didn’t have them.' Photo: Patrick Browne

Helen's story is typical of so many young girls who ended up in these religious-run institutions, and which were documented in harrowing detail by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

Helen became pregnant at the age of 17 after being raped by a neighbouring farmer. She was later banished from her home in Castledermot, Co Kildare, to Dublin by her local priest who sent her, on on her own, to St Patrick’s Mother and Baby home. She gave birth to her only child, a son, who was later adopted.

“The priest called me a tramp," she said, "He roared at my mother ‘get her out of here’ and before I left, he pulled up my skirt to see if I had any knickers on, the rotten man he was."

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Helen applied for payment from the mother and baby home redress scheme after it opened for applications. According to the Government, the redress is intended as "acknowledgement of suffering experienced while resident” in a mother and baby institution or county institution.

However, despite Helen's age, she is still waiting for payment, and the promised enhanced medical supports. Helen Culpan told the Irish Examiner she believes survivors were deliberately humiliated by the Church, and that the State is repeating that behaviour by “ignoring” her.

“It is humiliating to have to ask for the money and it is humiliating to have to wait,” she said. She has chosen to tell her story now because she “does not want to die and take it to the grave”.

“The priest that put me in the home was a bastard. God forgive me, but he was.

“I was 17 years old, and I was being raped from the age of 10 by a dirty old farmer up the road who was around 60 years of age. He had loads of land, he was a bachelor a horrible man, he gave us milk for free. We were so poor, and my mother would send me up there.

I did not know what he was doing to me, I thought this must be what men do to women. But then I was pregnant, and I told my mother everything. She was disgusted with me. No man got the blame in those days.

“My mother took me to the doctor; he said go to the gardaí and the gardaí said go to the church.

“The priest abused my mother he shouted ‘get her out of here, and then he pulled up my skirt. I could not afford any knickers so no I did not have any on, if I’m being honest but most young girls in poverty didn’t have them.

“He shouted, ‘Get her out of here, get her out of the town’ and then I heard after I left that he stood on the altar and told a packed Sunday mass ‘there’s too many bastards being born in this town’.

The priest gave her mother the name of a home in Dublin and told her to send her daughter there.

She said:

I had never been to Dublin in my life I had to go on my own and find my way to the nursing home. How I found my way I don’t know.

“I did find it and I was pregnant, and I remember my heart rate was sky high when I arrived. There were around 40 girls there waiting to have babies. 

"The woman who ran the home told me one day to go to St. James’ Hospital because she said the baby was due. I went and was admitted, and my son was born in 1952.” 

Pain

Like many women who gave birth in mother and baby homes at that time, Helen was given no pain relief.

“They cut me open, I didn’t know how babies were born,” she said. “They cut me up during the delivery, I had so much pain”.

Grasping her side as she spoke, she said: “To this day I still have a pain in the area of where my womb was. I had stitches and sutures.

“A few years later, I had to have a hysterectomy, and the doctors told me the nuns in the hospital had made bits of my insides.

“After that, I had no more children. I got married and my husband was very angry over that, my mother had 15 children so I should have had a big family, but it didn’t happen”.

St Patrick’s Mother and Baby home

After the birth of her only child, a boy, she stayed for two years at St Patrick’s Mother and Baby home with her son on the Navan Road in north Dublin. 

She then placed him for adoption because she had “no money, no roof over my head, I had nothing, there was no choice”.

The nuns later transferred her to Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry in south Dublin where she “scrubbed floors, windows and folded laundry” for eight months.

“My son did not come with me, he stayed behind and was adopted,” she said.

Compensation

Helen is entitled to redress for the time she spent in St Patrick's Mother and Baby Home on the Navan Road, and also for her unpaid labour in Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry. She estimates that she is entitled to between €25,000 and €30,000.

In a statement, the Department of Children said: “Whilst we cannot comment on individual cases for obvious reasons, we can confirm that we are prioritising by age. However, some cases are more complex than others and this will impact on the timeline for processing."

The Department of Children said as of August 5, a Notice of Determination, which is a decision on an application has issued in 1,956 cases and more than 80% of these included an offer under the Payment Scheme.

To date, 1,065 offers have been accepted and 859 applicants have received their award, with an average payment of approximately €15,000. Overall, 4,769 applications have been received to date of which 3,856 are completed applications and are progressing or determined.

Helen's story

While Helen continues to wait for her payment, she is keen to record her story, so that it doesn't die with her. 

Born in February 1934, she grew up in Castledermot in Co Kildare to her parents Paddy and Bridget Core who had 15 children — Helen was the eighth child.

“The war had broken out and my father left my mother with all of those children, and she was pregnant with another. He went to England and didn’t come back,” she said.

“We had no money and mother went to the sergeant in Castledermot, and he brought my father home, and he promised he would send money and then he went back and sent money once or twice and then stopped.

“He was brought to court in England, and he turned around and told the judge, they are not my children they are my brother's, his brother was living at home. The judge could do nothing. From that day he never came home, he died in 1983, good riddance to him.

My poor mother was alone with nine girls and six boys; we had no electricity no water. A gang of men went off to England at that time, and my father went and didn’t want to come home. I never forgave him for what he did on my mother, never mind us. 

A local farmer, who owned acres of land, and cattle offered Bridget Core free milk.

“I was sent up to get the milk, I was around 10,” Helen explains.  “He would lift me up on the shelf, I didn’t know what he was doing to me.

“I just thought this was what men did to women. He wasn’t married, he was on his own in a big home, a big plantation, with plenty of money.

“When I was 14, I got a chance to go to Manchester, my sister was there. But she lost her job, and I had to come home. I was 17 then and that’s when the farmer raped me again and I got pregnant.

“I couldn’t even read or write, I knew nothing, we hadn’t a clue about the birds and the bees.”

She said the farmer knew about her pregnancy but never owned up and nobody in authority took any action.

Helen Culpan: 'I was 17 then and that’s when the farmer raped me again and I got pregnant.' Photo: Patrick Browne

After her son was adopted friends of Helen decided to go to Wales to look for work and she joined then. She secured a job as a barmaid.

“I enjoyed the work,” she said. “It was a great life over there. I met my husband Edward Culpan, he died 26 years ago; we got married in 1957."

Years later, she managed to trace her birth son, but the relationship did not work out. “It was very upsetting, but what can I do?”

She made friends when she moved to Carlow, including well-known former Magdelene survivor Maureen Sullivan.

“I kept it a secret but started telling Maureen a while back and then I thought well nobody helped me back then, and I had to keep all this a secret all of my life.

I want to say it now before I die, I want to put it out there and not take it to the grave with me.

“I remember absolutely everything. I was deprived of more children over whatever they did after my son was born. That farmer got away with raping me and all that land and home and property could have gone to my son, except nobody would let me put his name as the father on the birth cert.

“There was no help for women like me or my poor mother who was abandoned by my father. Sex was ignored, sexual abuse was ignored, they all got away with it."