Time to acknowledge and address decades of racism

During the last few decades there has been acknowledgement of how unmarried mothers and their children who were placed in the care of the state were mistreated and sometimes abused within Church-run institutions, writes Bryan Fanning, Professor of Migration and Social Policy at University College Dublin.

To a considerable extent this abuse was made possible by the stigma then attached to sex outside marriage. Efforts to hide unwanted women and their children away from society created a climate in which abuse could take place and be covered up.