The last couple of days has been so upsetting. I thought I had moved on, but realised that I had buried my past.
I was in a mother and baby home in 1987, Dunboyne Good Shepherd Convent. My experience was a good experience. I was treated with respect and kindness.
I was 24 years of age working in the civil service, had a relationship with a separated man and became pregnant. I was full of shame, upset that I upset my family. I turned to Cura, the Irish Catholic Church’s support service for women facing crisis pregnancies, and they helped me. I met a lovely social worker who suggested a few options and Dunboyne was one of them. I had decided from the very start that I would give my baby up for adoption. I was struggling myself and was unhappy in my life. I wanted my baby to have a good life and he did. He was adopted by two lovely people who absolutely loved him.
Where I experienced most discrimination was in Holles Street — the nurses looked down on us. The day I was leaving the hospital, my mother and my sister were with me. We were with my baby saying goodbye. The nurse came into the room and dragged the cot down the corridor to the nursery. I will never forget that sound. My sister and mother became very upset. I think I was just numb.
I asked myself where was the compassion? I blame the Catholic Church. The priests stood at that altar every Sunday and preached that we are sinners, they made us think having an intimate relationship was wrong. They influence communities and governments.
Every Sunday we went to Mass in the convent church, and it was an elderly priest that gave Mass. One Sunday he preached from the altar that condoms were evil and the devil. His congregation was pregnant single mothers of all ages and at different stages of pregnancy. They were so disconnected from reality and had such power and position in our society. Their words carried weight and influence.
I am lucky I have a good life, a lovely husband and two daughters. But that shame never goes and the trauma I went through will always be with me.
We as a society have a lot of healing to do. Many have suffered because of ignorance and closed minds.
This may all be forgotten in a couple of weeks, but it will always be with us.
Adrienne Adams Murphy
Bandon, Co Cork
What of culpability of the fathers?
I listened carefully to the apology issued by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin for the mothers and baby homes scandal. I listened in vain for any mention of the culpability of Irish political parties and Irish politicians in this scandal. Yes, he did mention the role and culpability of “the State”, but as leader of the Fianna Fáil party he never once mentioned the failures
by Fianna Fáil which was the governing party for vast majority of that
period.
Fine Gael was the governing party leaders on all the occasions when Fianna Fáil was not in power. It’s easy to blame the State and society and to avoid all accountability by specific individuals. Likewise, it is easy to blame the Catholic Church, when it was individual priests, nuns, and bishops who perpetrated these crimes by their actions or culpable failures.
Why was there no mention of the culpability of the fathers of all those children born in these institutions?
Edward Horgan
Castletroy, Co Limerick
Commission to probe men’s role
To ensure a clean break with our murky past and to expose the full historical truth there is a need now for a further commission to investigate possible criminal involvement by men in the pregnancies of the women.
Brendan Butler
Malahide, Co Dublin
Show me empathy in direct provision
Like many others, we welcome the apology by government to the survivors of the mother and baby homes, with the Taoiseach decrying the “failure in empathy and understanding” in the treatment of women and children, and calling for action, rather than words.
Aspirations to retrospectively address human rights abuses ring somewhat hollow, when our State since 1999 has perpetuated its institutionalisation, with the continuance of the direct provision system.
For more than 20 years, the system the State has enacted for people coming to Ireland looking for international protection has created extraordinarily high levels of mental ill-health, levels of self-harm and suicide in this marginalised population.
The Taoiseach spoke about the continued trauma survivors of mother and baby homes live with: we know that direct provision adds substantially to people’s trauma and it remains in the long-term. We have seen adults and children living in these institutions consistently marginalised and discriminated against.
The lack of urgency with which
direct provision is being dealt with is surely indicative of the State’s sincerity with regard to areas of institutionalisation.
Mike FitzGibbon
Lecturer, International Development, UCC
Shocking lack of foster carers
Upon reading the coverage of the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, a great sadness and shame has overcome Irish citizens. Hard to fathom for most. For those who have acute knowledge of working in the area of child protection, the unseen atrocities inflicted on certain children in Ireland remains a stain on society: children who must then be taken into State care. This is often caused by factors beyond parents’ control and can be a vicious cycle that repeats for generations.
There are the inevitable critics of the State for not pouring sufficient resources into relevant organisations who can assist in trying to right some of the wrongs caused to these children. Not all unjustified.
But the reality is that society has a role to play in this tragic underworld.
There is a shocking lack of foster carers available to welcome these vulnerable children into their homes. Instead, they are being placed in residential units at a younger and younger age, despite their pleas for the alternative. Whilst these residential units are modern specialist centres with highly qualified staff who attempt to simulate a home environment, it is no replacement for a constant loving family.
It is time for us to step up and
change the story for these children. Thankfully, the State has available resources so the gesture is not completely altruistic.
Orla Crowe
Ballina, Co Mayo
The lonely bus trip to Bessborough
Of course there must be proper resolution and redress to survivors, both mothers and children, for the appalling punishments when victims of a heartless society.
All through the 1950s, as a child, which I remember vividly, there was the all-pervasive reality that citizens simply did not have rights. We knew this as if we were born with that extra knowing “gene”.
But neither did our struggling parents and wider communities know how to go about changing the cruel systems they laboured under.
Change came slowly, thankfully, through enlightened teachers and younger politicians who began to put heads above parapets; also by the youth, who demanded there had to be better ways of governing other than coersion and fear.
Rock n’ roll helped us all along, it has to be said, a first hint at real freedom.
People then began to get in touch with their humanity and natural instincts which demanded urgent change. My generation is the one when people began to be heard.
As lately as the 1980s when I was a bus conductor in Cork City, I would regulary have older passengers getting off at Marian Park in Blackrock, and shyly asking me how to get to Bessborough Home from there. They almost always carried little bunches of flowers to that girl or woman they were visiting. We can be assured that this particular time of horror, even if unaddressed properly up to recently, will never again happen. This has to be seen as a mature population moving forward, not before time.
Robert Sullivan
Bantry, Co Cork
Upfront and so very personal
Your front page (Irish Examiner,
Wednesday, Jan 13, 2021)
to mark the publication of the
Mother and Baby Homes Commission report was perfect. It begs the many
to look closer and to carefully acknowledge our fellow humans their names, their ages and the dates they left us.
Michael Gannon
St Thomas’ Square, Kilkenny
Depressing week for Irish Catholics
An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, rightly credited Catherine Corless in his statement to Dáil Éireann this week. What went on in our mother and baby homes is a national scandal. An integral part of that scandal is the fact that it might never have come to light without people like Catherine Corless. Apologies are easy. The Catholic Church needs to learn and change. Otherwise the churches will continue to empty. This is a very depressing week for any Irish Catholic.
Michael Deasy
Carrigart, Co Donegal
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