IRISH CATHOLIC MOTHER AND BABY HOMES 1700S TO 1961
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
MARCH 3, 2017


SEVERE ABUSES AT “MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES” AND THE ORPHANAGES CALLED MOTHER AND BABY HOMES, AREN’T A NEW SUBJECT, AND IN THE LAST TEN YEARS HAVE COME INTO THE NEWS BOTH AS FICTION AND NON-FICTION. A CATHOLIC ORGANIZATION -- CATHOLIC LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL RIGHTS – ARGUES THAT THE HORRORS DESCRIBED BY SURVIVORS OF THOSE HOMES IS EXAGGERATED. GO TO THE INTERNET TO READ THE MOST INFORMATIONAL OF ALL, BUT CLEARLY BIASED TOWARD THE CHURCH, “MYTHS OF THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES,” BY BILL DONOHUE. HE DEFENDS THEM AS BEING THE RESULT OF ANTI-CATHOLIC PREJUDICE AND “OVERBLOWN.”

THESE TWO MOST RECENT NEWS STORIES TELL OF AN UNDERGROUND STRUCTURE OF TWENTY CHAMBERS, ALL CONTAINING HUMAN REMAINS, WHICH IS CLEARLY A PHYSICAL REALITY RATHER THAN A MERE STORY OR A “MYTH,” AT ALL. BUT IN ANY CASE, IT POINTS UP, IN MY MIND, THE KIND OF SHOCKING MISTREATMENT THAT HAS HAPPENED REPEATEDLY THROUGH TIME, UNDER THE THIRD REICH AGAINST THE JEWS AND IN NUMEROUS OTHER CASES, WHENEVER THE MARGINALIZATION OF ONE HUMAN BEING OR AN OSTRACIZED SUBCLASS OF PEOPLE OCCURS. HUMAN DECENCY SIMPLY GIVES WAY TO MINDLESS ABUSE OVER AND OVER. COMMONLY HEARD PHRASES THAT APPLY ARE “OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND” AND ABOVE ALL, “NOT MY PROBLEM.” OH, YES, AND “I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS.” THANK GOD IT ISN’T A COMMON OCCURRENCE.

A SIMILAR SITUATION HERE IN THE SOUTHERN USA HAPPENED AT THE INFAMOUS DOZIER SCHOOL FOR BOYS IN MARIANNA, FLORIDA. THAT WAS A REFORM SCHOOL, ONLY CLOSED IN 2011, AND SIMILARLY TO THIS CASE, A SIZEABLE CEMETERY WAS FOUND WITH MANY UNMARKED GRAVES, AND SOME OF THE BODIES SHOWED SEVERE ABUSE. WHEN INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE NOT VALUED AND OBSERVED, WHEN UNTRAINED AND/OR SADISTIC PEOPLE ARE HIRED TO WORK THERE, ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN, ESPECIALLY IN SMALL OUT OF THE WAY PLACES LIKE MARIANNA, FLORIDA, WHERE NOBODY IS REALLY KEEPING TRACK OF WHAT THE ORGANIZATION IS DOING. AN ORPHANAGE OR A SCHOOL LIKE THE DOZIER SCHOOL ARE PLACES WHERE THE CHILDREN OF INDIGENT PARENTS ARE SENT. OF COURSE, IN THE IRISH LAUNDRIES THE WOMEN ARE “WORKING OFF” THEIR SIN. IT WAS CONSIDERED A PENANCE, NOT SLAVERY. I FEEL VERY SURE, HOWEVER, THAT VIRTUALLY NOBODY WAS SENT THERE WHO WASN’T INDIGENT, AND THOSE MAGDALEN LAUNDRIES FURNISHED CLEAN CLOTHING FOR THE MILITARY AND OTHER GROUPS IN IRISH SOCIETY INTO RECENT TIMES.

WHEN THE SITUATION IS UNCOVERED, OF COURSE, THERE WILL BE MUCH PUBLIC WAILING AND GNASHING OF TEETH, BUT WITH NO RESULTANT CHANGES IN THE LAW, IN ALL TOO MANY CASES. IT HAPPENS BECAUSE FAMILIES CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY FOR GOOD CARE OR REHABILITATION, AND “THE STATE” TAKES OVER. A PREGNANT TEENAGER IS BOTH A SHAME AND A BURDEN; AND A DELINQUENT BOY HAS BECOME A PROBLEM AND RUN AFOUL OF THE LAW. THE “CONSERVATIVE” GOVERNMENT DOESN’T RELISH ITS’ TASK OF “TAKING CARE” OF SUCH “HUMAN REFUSE,” AND IS UNWILLING TO EXTEND MORE PUBLIC MONEY TO THE AID OF FAMILIES, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S CONCERNING PEOPLE OF COLOR.

IN THE CATHOLIC ORPHANAGES AND WORKHOUSES, THE WOMEN HAD BEEN FOUND TO BE PREGNANT OR WERE SUSPECTED OF BEING SEXUALLY “LOOSE.” IN ONE CASE BELOW IT STATED THAT THE WOMAN WAS CONSIDERED TO BE “TOO PRETTY,” AND NEEDED TO BE “REMOVED FROM SOCIETY” TO PREVENT ITS’ BECOMING “CORRUPTED” BY HER VERY PRESENCE. I REALLY DO GET SICK AND TIRED OF READING ABOUT THIS TYPE OF THINKING, BUT HERE IT IS AGAIN, SO I’M PUBLISHING IT. I DO WISH PEOPLE EN MASSE CARED MORE ABOUT OTHERS, BUT THAT IS APPARENTLY AN IMPOSSIBLE GOAL. IT’S THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, OR PERHAPS MORE TRULY, THE LUCKIEST.

ANY POWER STRUCTURE, RELIGIOUS OR OTHERWISE, IS SUBJECT TO CORRUPTION. THE FOLLOWING INVOLVES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN TWO RELATED SITUATIONS, THE CATHOLIC ORPHANAGES WHERE PREGNANT GIRLS WERE HOUSED UNTIL THE BABY CAME AND THEN THE BABY WAS MORE OR LESS SOLD FOR ADOPTION. THAT SCANDALOUS BABY TRADE EXTENDED TO AMERICAN ADOPTIVE FAMILIES AND OTHER LOCATIONS AS WELL. THAT WAS A MONEYMAKING VENTURE (SUPPOSEDLY TO FINANCE THE ORPHANAGE). THAT IS THE CASE IN THE MOVIE PHILOMENA, STARRING JUDY DENSCH AND THE “MAGDALEN LAUNDRIES,” NAMED FOR MARY MAGDALEN IN THE BIBLE. THOSE WERE ESSENTIALLY WORKHOUSES FOR WOMEN WHO WERE, OR WERE FEARED WOULD BECOME, SEXUALLY IMMORAL.

SEE TODAY’S SHOCKING NEWS ARTICLES BELOW OF THE RESULT OF A GOVERNMENT PROBE WHICH UNCOVERED MASS GRAVES OF CHILDREN FROM A FEW MONTHS OLD TO THREE YEARS. SEE BOTH THE CBS AND THE CHICAGO TIMES ARTICLES, AS THEY CONTAIN SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT INFORMATION.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/catholic-orphanage-childrens-mass-grave-found-county-galway-ireland/
Mass grave for young children found at former Catholic orphanage
CBS/AP
March 3, 2017, 9:25 AM

Photograph -- This picture shows a shrine in Tuam, County Galway on June 9, 2014, erected in memory of up to 800 children who were allegedly buried at the site of the former home for unmarried mothers run by nuns. GETTY
Photograph -- tuam-ireland-orphanage-mass-grave-450338214.jpg
This picture shows a shrine in Tuam, County Galway on June 9, 2014, erected in memory of up to 800 children who were buried at the site of the former home for unmarried mothers run by nuns. GETTY
Play VIDEO -- Magdalen laundries: Women confined in convents


DUBLIN -- Forensics experts say they have found a mass grave for young children at a former Catholic orphanage in Ireland where suspicions of unrecorded, unmarked burials have lingered for decades.

Friday’s announcement by the government-appointed Mother and Baby Homes Commission confirms a 2014 investigation by a local historian who found death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam, County Galway, from its opening in 1925 to its 1961 closure.

The commission says excavations at the site from November to January found an underground structure divided into 20 chambers containing “significant quantities of human remains.”

It says DNA analysis of selected remains confirmed the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks to 3 years old and were buried when the orphanage was operating.

The history of unwed mothers forced into hard labor is a well-documented dark chapter in Irish history.

For nearly four decades, thousands of these “fallen women” toiled at the place in Tuam, called simply, “the Home,” to atone for having out-of-wedlock children.

While many of the women eventually left “the Home” after serving their time, many of their children apparently were not so fortunate.



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-ireland-catholic-orphange-mass-grave-20170303-story.html
Unmarked mass grave for children found at old Catholic orphanage in Ireland
Shawn Pogatchnik
Associated Press
March 3, 2017

Photograph -- The site of an unmarked mass grave, photographed in 2014, for children who died at a former Catholic orphanage in Tuam, County Galway, western Ireland. (Niall Carson / AP)

ass grave containing the remains of babies and young children has been discovered at a former Catholic orphanage in Ireland, government-appointed investigators announced Friday in a finding that offered the first conclusive proof following a historian's efforts to trace the fates of nearly 800 children who perished there.

The judge-led Mother and Baby Homes Commission said excavations since November at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, had found an underground structure divided into 20 chambers containing "significant quantities of human remains."

The commission said DNA analysis of selected remains confirmed the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks to 3 years old and were buried chiefly in the 1950s, when the overcrowded facility was one of more than a dozen in Ireland offering shelter to orphans, unwed mothers and their children. The Tuam home closed in 1961.

Friday's findings provided the first proof after decades of suspicions that the vast majority of children who died at the home had been interred on the site in unmarked graves. That was a common, but ill-documented practice at such Catholic-run facilities amid high child mortality rates in early 20th century Ireland.

The government in 2014 formed the investigation after a local Tuam historian, Catherine Corless, tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who had died as residents of the facility — but could find a burial record for only one child.

"Everything pointed to this area being a mass grave," said Corless, who recalled how local boys playing in the field had reported seeing a pile of bones in a hidden underground chamber there in the mid-1970s.

The government's commissioner for children, Katherine Zappone, said Friday's findings were "sad and disturbing." She pledged that the children's descendants [sic] would be consulted on providing proper burials and other memorials.

Mass grave in Ireland

Engineers using ground penetrating radar in June 2014 at what was later confirmed to be the site of a mass grave for hundereds of young children at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, western Ireland. (Aidan Crawley / EPA)

"We will honor their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately," Zappone said.

The report found that the dead children may have been placed in underground chambers originally used to hold sewage. Corless said she found records stating that the sewage systems were used until 1937, when the home was connected to a modern water supply.

A decommissioned septic tank had been "filled with rubble and debris and then covered with top soil" and did not appear to contain remains, the report said. But excavators found children's remains inside a neighboring connected structure that may have been used to contain sewage or waste water.

The commission's finding that most of the remains date to the 1950s corroborates Corless' collection of death certificates. It also dispels a popular argument that bones seen at the site might predate the orphanage's opening, when the building was a workhouse for the adult poor, or even be from people who died in the mid-19th century Great Famine.

Labour Party lawmaker Joan Burton said the Tuam orphanage's dead may have been interred "without normal funeral rights, [sic] and maybe even without their wider families having been made aware." She called on the Catholic Church to provide more assistance to investigators.

The investigators, who are examining the treatment of children at a long-closed network of 14 Mother and Baby Homes, said they still were trying to identify "who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way."

The Bon Secours Sisters order of nuns, which ran the home until its closure, said in a statement that all its records, including of potential burials, had been handed to state authorities in 1961. It pledged to cooperate with the continuing investigation.

Corless criticized the Bon Secours response as "the usual maddening nonsense. They must apologize and take responsibility for what happened there."

She called on the nuns to promise explicitly to help the state organize proper marked burial places for every dead child once each set of remains could be identified.

"That's the least that can be done for them at this late stage," she said.


PHILOMENA


https://rewire.news/article/2014/01/20/philomena-must-see-film-magdalene-laundries-forced-adoptions/
‘Philomena,’ A Must-See Film About the Magdalene Laundries and Forced Adoptions
Jan 20, 2014, 3:59pm Karen Smith Rotabi

Philomena is another reminder of the vast inequalities between those who adopt children and birth mothers.

Photograph -- Philomena is another reminder of the vast inequalities between those who adopt children and birth mothers.
JoBlo.com / YouTube


Philomena, starring Judi Dench and directed by Stephen Frears, received four Oscar nominations last week. The film is based on a true story chronicled in Martin Sixsmith’s 2009 book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search. Captured is a little known piece of adoption history—the forcible removal of Irish children from their unwed mothers and then adoption by U.S. families. This extraordinary story illustrates the grave injustices of the Magdalene Laundries that were operated under the authority of the Catholic Church. Irish girls and women were forced into slave labor, working long hours cleaning in the laundries. The labor took place in hot, crowded, and generally miserable conditions.

The slavery that took place resulted in a recent legal agreement: The Irish government will now pay €58 million (nearly $79 million) to hundreds of the Magdalene Laundry survivors. Many of the survivors were adolescent girls who were sent to work while pregnant—sent to the Catholic sisters for repentance and remediation. The atrocities were such that Ireland’s prime minister, Enda Kenny, made an emotional apology. “Choking back tears,” he said, “This is a national shame, for which I again say, I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.” To date, no such apology or financial settlement has yet to be made by the Catholic Church.

As the film adaptation of Philomena documents, the forced labor in the laundries was deemed necessary to pay for room and board as well as other expenses, such as the medical costs of childbirth. Because the documentation was poor and much of it was intentionally destroyed by the guilty nuns—who set fire to some of the records—various facts have been conveniently lost. As a result, the absolute numbers of children sent into illegal adoptions within and from Ireland to the United States and elsewhere is unknown today. However, the evidence is damning, as Magdalene survivors seek justice and document their histories, including their humiliating living conditions. Part of that evidence is being preserved historically while grave markers document the young women who did not survive the harsh treatment of slavery, poor medical care, and heartbreak of forced child removal and adoptions.

Philomena captures how force and fraud interfaced in illicit adoptions from Ireland to the United States, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Spain also has a scandal of child sales into adoption, orchestrated by members of the Catholic Church. Some of these Spanish children were also destined to the United States, and search and reunions are taking place in a handful of cases. In the case of Philomena, the main character’s reunion with her lost son has several twists that create suspense. Then there is the sadness of lost love, and it is undeniable.

Philomena is another reminder of the vast inequalities between those who adopt children and birth mothers. Globally, this is a largely untold story in which some birth mothers have been exploited for reasons of poverty, social exclusion, and stigma. This has been true in South Korea, India, Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere, using a variety of child abduction techniques, and the consequences have been profound.

As Philomena illustrates, child abduction takes on many forms, and often those involved in the crime present themselves as “saviors” who are above reproach. Almost always those involved in the illicit practices are financially enriched while receiving applause for the “rescue” of a child. All the while, the birth families are left behind mourning for their loss and, in time, many adoptees as well as birth mothers begin a search. In doing so, they risk intensifying the sense of loss, or they may benefit from ultimately “knowing.”

Even if one has not been personally touched by adoption, the story captures the theme of rebirth of the human spirit, contrasted against the entrapments of daily living in which deeper satisfactions are often overlooked. The film also looks at cynicism versus humor; taking a positive approach to living is most certainly a theme of Philomena. While some may dismiss this as just another feel-good movie, the contrasts and contradictions keep the story real in its intensity.

Audiences are presented with a complicated and true story, told elegantly, while exposing the imperfections of the human experience. Philomena is transnational, adding a dimension of a culture lost, and a birth mother’s yearning to understand the differences while unconditionally accepting the results of her search. Human emotion and the need to reconcile are presented head-on. It is impossible for the audience to leave unaffected. Fundamentally, the act of forgiveness is profound—presenting a clearly developed story line about the challenge of acceptance versus justice that inevitably emerges in the truth and reconciliation of past human rights abuses.

Surprisingly, you will laugh before you cry, and both emotions are well warranted. The networks of social relationships are astonishing, reminding the audience of just how close we may be to someone we have lost and yearn to find. Dench’s character in Philomena is a portrait of how finding happiness and acceptance is very much in how you look at life.

Moviegoers will be left to think more about healing and reproductive injustices of the past, underscoring the mean-spiritedness of some who stand in moral judgment of others. And then there is greed—another dimension of the illicit behaviors and practices of those who have scripted these crimes. Philomena boasts a superb cast supporting Dench.

For more information about the Magdalene Laundries, there are a variety of sources online documenting the lives of women who suffered and survived, as well as those who are deceased; oral histories, photographs, and other artifacts are being collected and appropriate ways in which to honor the women are being considered in terms of museums and other celebrations of their lives and losses. Also, other countries are now investigating their own laundries and survivors, as is the case in Australia. In sum, an astounding social movement for truth and justice is clearly underway, and one way to honor the laundry survivors is hearing their stories. For the act of witnessing is sometimes the only thing that we can do as the story unfolds.