Opportunities for closure are slipping away from Mother and Baby home survivors

We owe it to the Mother and Baby home survivors to listen and to support them when the report comes out in January.

Tom Warde at the Mother and Baby home memorial in Tuam. “Everyone looked down on us." Photo: Breeda Murphy

“The right to the truth is both an individual and a collective right. Each victim has the right to know the truth about violations against them, but the truth also has to be told more widely as a safeguard to prevent violations from happening again” - 8th Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon - March 24, 2013.

The search for a truthful narrative to the Mother and Baby Home scandal is one that has, for decades, proved most difficult to emerge – hindered at every opportunity and none. For those to whom it remains personal, as their story, their truth, their right to know what they cannot recall of those early years, the delay has been tortuous.