Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

Flippyfloppy

Cabaal wrote: »

http://www.thejournal.ie/state-files-removed-from-national-archive-following-mother-and-baby-home-revelations-1510066-Jun2014/



I think the first comment sums up what very likely could be happening,

"If you listen carefully you will hear the brush, sweeping everything under the carpet. The Irish way."

It worked throughout the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's anytime these revelations came up, I'm skeptical if it won't happen now.

Lets not forget, when this was reported by a German paper in the 1950's they did all they could to hope it would go away...and it did.

Holy sh!t.

Cabaal

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/06/12/what-frances-knew/

What Fine Gael Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald knew?

The newly-appointed Justice Minster Frances Fitzgerald spoke to Sean O’Rourke yesterday morning about the special commission of investigation that will examine the high mortality rates at mother and baby homes in Ireland, the burial practices at the sites, secret and illegal adoptions and vaccine trials on children.

Specifically, Ms Fitzgerald was asked about what she did after she was told about these matters by adoption groups last July.

Fitzgerald: “Well, I’m very glad to respond to that. I certainly had no information in relation to the possibility that there were 800 bodies in any grave. In fact, of course, the details of that, that are emerging. I mean the best witness we have in relation to that grave at the moment is saying that there are probably 20.”

And yet.

A report that the group Adoption Rights Now gave to Ms Fitzgerald, last July, detailed several issues including the matter of Irish babies being sent from mother and baby homes in Ireland to America, England, Germany, Libya, Egypt, the Philippines, India, Australia, South Africa and Venezuela for adoption; vaccination trials at the mother and baby homes; high ‘illegitimate’ infant mortality rates and concerns about burials.

“If we apply a cautious figure of mortality rates running at an average of less than three times the national average for the total of 100,000 Irish adoptees since 1922, a figure of upwards of 10,000 babies who died above and beyond the deaths which would have occurred naturally would be conservative. We are clearly stating on the record that at least ten thousand babies were neglected to death. We believe the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are responsible for at least 2,500 to 3,500 of these deaths and the evidence so far uncovered backs up this truth with incontrovertible facts and a clear pattern of neglecting babies and children to death. These helpless, innocent victims were buried without coffins or ceremony in unmarked or barely marked graves. Many never had a name, a birth certificate, a death certificate or baptism. “

pauldla

robindch wrote: »

If I wasn't aware of your history of posting a continuous stream of "ah, yer all just bloody begrudgers" comments, I'd be quite annoyed at this kind of trivializing note too.

As it is, well, Cabaal's rolling eyes kind of sum up my feelings - can't you post anything worth reading? Can't you change your tune for just one topic?

Not a little harsh, perhaps...?

SpaceTime

It's interesting that Noel Browne was asking questions about the regime in these institutions in the Dail in 1961 showing me that the rest of the political elite's denial of any knowledge is nonsense.

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/Debates%20Authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/takes/dail1961062100004?opendocument

I'm on a mobile but it took two seconds to find reference by just searching 'unmarried mothers home' as keywords.

There's also a question asking if women were legally compelled to stay in them after giving birth - answer is no.

So were the nuns falsely imprisoning women?

http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/DebatesWebPack.nsf/takes/dail1961021500018#N3

Dail Eireann record 15/02/1961

Noel C. Browne asked the Minister for Health whether there is any compulsion permissible to cause unmarried mothers whose children are born in local authority institutions to remain in any local authority institution after the normal period of parturition.

Seán MacEntee The answer is in the negative.

*parturition is just a very medical term for process of giving birth.

To me this just removes any credibility that the powers that were at the time knew nothing.

It's blatantly obvious that Dr Browne was trying to get something done on this issue and the state didn't want to know.

There's no plauasible deniability. They sat on their hands while our citizens were being locked up and treated as slaves by a private institution.

Spring Onion

Cabaal wrote: »

If the catholic church really was sorry then why didn't they own up to their own sins decades ago? Its not like they didn't know what they did.

Absolutely spot on.

SpaceTime

Spring Onion wrote: »

Absolutely spot on.

They're 'sorrrrrreeeeeey' it's quite a different thing from being genuinely sorry.

Sorry they're caught out in a PR storm more likely.

Bannasidhe

One question which has been asked time and time again is whether crimes were committed.

Well, barrister friend certainly believes that, at least from 1946 when the Charter of the International Court defined such things , recognised crimes against humanity were occurring.

In the discussion of the treatment of mothers and children in State institutions run by catholic organizations on behalf of the state the term "crime against humanity" is being used. It might assist to look at the accepted definition of this crime in Article 7 of the Rome Statute under which the International Criminal Court operates.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

"Article 7 Crimes against humanity

1. For the purpose of this Statute, ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a) Murder;

(b) Extermination;

(c) Enslavement;

(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

(f) Torture;

(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph

3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraphor any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

(i) Enforced disappearance of persons;

(j) The crime of apartheid;

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great
suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.


2. For the purpose of paragraph 1:

(a) ‘Attack directed against any civilian population’ means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack;

(b) ‘Extermination’ includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life,
inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to
bring about the destruction of part of a population;


(c) ‘Enslavement’ means the exercise of any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person and includes the exercise of such power in the course of trafficking in persons, in particular women and children;

(d) ‘Deportation or forcible transfer of population’ means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law;

(e) ‘Torture’ means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering,
whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the
control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or
suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions; �
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court


(f) ‘Forced pregnancy’ means the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out other grave violations of international law. This definition shall not in any way be interpreted as affecting national laws relating to pregnancy;

(g) ‘Persecution’ means the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity;

(h) ‘The crime of apartheid’ means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an
institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one
racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the
intention of maintaining that regime;

(i) ‘Enforced disappearance of persons’ means the arrest, detention or
abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or
acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the
fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time.

3. For the purpose of this Statute, it is understood that the term ‘gender’ refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society. The term ‘gender’ does not indicate any meaning different from the above."

The Statute was not in force at the time that most of the acts discussed took place however crimes against humanity have been recognized in international law since the Armenian Genocide during WWI and were specifically defined in the Charter of the International Court trying Nazi War Criminals from 1946 onwards and in the various other tribunals that carried out the same function in the states affected such as Russia and Poland.

Spring Onion

SpaceTime wrote: »

They're 'sorrrrrreeeeeey' it's quite a different thing from being genuinely sorry.

Sorry they're caught out in a PR storm more likely.

From my perspective, these drip-fed scandals are better than a "come clean" approach because it drags out the awfulness and criminality of that Roman organisation in the public eye for much longer. I believe this will quicken their ultimate demise. Before now, all I wanted was full secularisation but now I want that organisation in Ireland to crumble.

Sean Brady is still the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, for me that says it all. He should be behind bars.

SpaceTime

The wheels of justice grind slowly but they do grind!

In this case the most likely form of justice will be the organisation's powerbase dissolving away in the very bile it created itself.

Cabaal

Spring Onion wrote: »

Sean Brady is still the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, for me that says it all. He should be behind bars.

I agree he should, however it won't happen.

Why?
Because the Vatican are in the process of fast tracking JP II to saint hood, a man that knew all about the sex abuse will soon be a saint.

you'd think the media should be screaming about how fecked up this is, but no....the media reported it as a great thing and even RTE did alot of coverage of it

robindch

SpaceTime wrote: »

The wheels of justice grind slowly but they do grind!

Off-topically, but possibly relevantly, the phrase is not "the wheels of justice", but the "mills of god".

The earliest attribution is, again perhaps ironically, from a poem "Against the Grammarians" by the Roman rationalist Sextus Empiricus in which he quotes an earlier Greek work, in which the equivalent phrase is translated into Latin, and thence into English, as follows "The mills of the gods are late to grind, but they grind small." Which has been rendered more recently by Longfellow, thusly and famously:

Though the mills of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.

//ontopicagain

Akrasia

Cabaal wrote: »

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/06/12/what-frances-knew/

What Fine Gael Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald knew?

I've added up the casualties for all the major armed conflicts in Ireland in the 20th century
The 1916 rising about 450 people died on all sides
Irish war of independence - about 2000 including conflicts in NI post 1921
The Irish Civil war killed about 2000 people ( http://www.theirishstory.com/2012/06/19/casualties-of-the-irish-civil-war-in-dublin/#.U5mCRJSQT-q )
Northern Irish 'troubles' killed about - 3500

In total, the number of people who died in Ireland in armed conflicts in the 20th century amounts to less than 10000 and this includes combatants who make up the majority of the casualties. Meanwhile, the catholic church was conducting a war against Irish women and children where at least 10000 completely innocent children died and were usually buried in unmarked graves

I Heart Internet

Cabaal wrote: »

I agree he should, however it won't happen.

Why?

Because the PSNI or Gardai have zero evidence that Sean Brady is guilty of any crime.

Cabaal wrote: »

Because the Vatican are in the process of fast tracking JP II to saint hood, a man that knew all about the sex abuse will soon be a saint.

you'd think the media should be screaming about how fecked up this is, but no....the media reported it as a great thing and even RTE did alot of coverage of it

JP2 is already a saint. Canonised earlier this year.

There was plenty of media coverage on the canonisation and plenty of it questioning of or downright hostile to the canonisation. Including a RTE programme about it....http://www.rte.ie/presspack/2014/04/27/the-new-saints-a-beyond-belief-special/

Sainthood does not imply perfection in everything a person has done.

aloyisious

Would anyone have details (or internet data) on how the Hebrew and Muslim religions inter the remains of dead babies & children born outside wedlock? I'm assuming that the other mainstream Christian religion here has similar rules to those of the RCC.

krankykitty

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Sainthood does not imply perfection in everything a person has done.

Really? Standards are quite low for sainthood so

I Heart Internet

krankykitty wrote: »

Really? Standards are quite low for sainthood so

Reasonably low, yes. Anyone who has made it to heaven is, technically, a saint. The RCC simple recognises that.

SpaceTime

robindch wrote: »

Off-topically, but possibly relevantly, the phrase is not "the wheels of justice", but the "mills of god".

The earliest attribution is, again perhaps ironically, from a poem "Against the Grammarians" by the Roman rationalist Sextus Empiricus in which he quotes an earlier Greek work, in which the equivalent phrase is translated into Latin, and thence into English, as follows "The mills of the gods are late to grind, but they grind small." Which has been rendered more recently by Longfellow, thusly and famously:

Though the mills of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds he all.

//ontopicagain

In this case it'll be the mills of public sentiment rather than god that's likely to be their biggest issue.

However, it hasa similar effect.

You can only hide something this big and this rotten for so long before the stench becomes impossible to mask.

Birroc

I Heart Internet wrote: »

JP2 is already a saint. Canonised earlier this year.

Sainthood does not imply perfection in everything a person has done.

Yes indeed, it shows the other clergy that ignoring issues such as child abuse, child abuse cover-ups and moving child abusers from parish to parish for decades will not affect your nomination for sainthood. Frankly that sainthood saga was disgusting but revealing.

I Heart Internet

Birroc wrote: »

Frankly that sainthood saga was disgusting but revealing.

How so?

same ol sh1te

Birroc wrote: »

Yes indeed, it shows the other clergy that ignoring issues such as child abuse, child abuse cover-ups and moving child abusers from parish to parish for decades will not affect your nomination for sainthood. Frankly that sainthood saga was disgusting but revealing.

He also died while still telling the people of Africa not to use condoms while millions died of Aids, evil b@stard

Flippyfloppy

same ol sh1te wrote: »

He also died while still telling the people of Africa not to use condoms while millions died of Aids, evil b@stard

It's ok though. He probably had an oul confession right before his death. Clean slate for all the sinners.

Birroc

I Heart Internet wrote: »

How so?

Because it showed how self serving they are. Ratzinger reckoned that making JP2 a saint would augur well when he passed on. The required miracles were a bit iffy if I remember correctly. Self praise is no praise.

Birroc

jank wrote: »

I am not making light of any situation. I was responding directly to a good point made by Gordon regarding peoples opinions being formed by their own personal experiences and in a wider context their environment. I just offered my 2 cents and it was not meant to be a sly dig at anyone or anything. Seriously, you guys need to calm down a bit and take people at their word.

I think my comment on the nature of Irish people is fairly accurate. This is a serious issue of course but unfortunately we do not do 'serious' very well. Hence the general reaction we see now. I wish it was not the case, I wish we were more a more serious people but ...

You used the word serious 4 times which makes me doubt your sincerity.

I Heart Internet

Birroc wrote: »

Because it showed how self serving they are. Ratzinger reckoned that making JP2 a saint would augur well when he passed on. The required miracles were a bit iffy if I remember correctly. Self praise is no praise.

Do you speak with Ratzinger often? You seem to know his mind on this matter.

old hippy

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Reasonably low, yes. Anyone who has made it to heaven is, technically, a saint. The RCC simple recognises that.

Do they get a certificate on arrival?

I Heart Internet

old hippy wrote: »

Do they get a certificate on arrival?

The idea is, believe it or not as you please, that the required miracles performed though the intercession of a saint is a type of certification that they've gotten to heaven. Apparently, one can only intercede with God on behalf of people who pray to you once you're actually IN heaven. So it's proof you've made it.

Bannasidhe

Oh what a tangled web we weave.
When first we practice to deceive!

Former children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald has admitted she read a dossier in 2011 calling for an inquiry into mother-and-baby homes, vaccine trials and illegal adoptions.

Ms Fitzgerald is coming under pressure to explain why she failed to act on the issue during her three years in office.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/frances-fitzgerald-i-saw-baby-dossier-in-2011-271805.html

On a different yet relevant topic. I feel that what has happened time and time again in this thread says a lot about how these crimes were allowed to happen.

Rather than focus on the issue of the detention of women and children, the sexual slavery, the medical trails, the deaths due to neglect, the illegal disposal of bodies - we bicker among ourselves like children in a playground.

We get treated like children by those in authority and we act like children. Which came first I wonder?

Divide and Conquer folks - have we still have learned nothing.

Bannasidhe

Looks like we can add forced repatriation to the growing list...

EXCLUSIVE: The 2600 women returned to mother and baby homes by Catholic “footsoldiers” after fleeing to Britain
In light of the Tuam Babies scandal, Niall O’Sullivan reveals how thousands of young, unmarried mothers fleeing to England between 1948 and 1971 in order to avoid ‘mother and baby’ homes were intercepted and forced back to Ireland by the Child Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland.

http://www.irishpost.co.uk/uncategorized/exclusively-weeks-irish-post

I, personally, know one woman (a cousin of my mother's) who escaped from the Good Shepherds in Cork who was apprehended at Rosslare by the Gardaí and returned to the 'home'. She wasn't an unwed mother. She was over 18. She was put in there by her mother for refusing to marry her mother's boyfriend and give the outward appearance to respectability to that relationship.

She married him and went from the church to the boat and has never lived in Ireland again. The happy couple of Mother-in-law plus son-in-law remained together until his death in the 1980s. Although they too moved to the UK in the late 1970s but that was to escape creditors....

SpaceTime

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Looks like we can add forced repatriation to the growing list...

http://www.irishpost.co.uk/uncategorized/exclusively-weeks-irish-post

I, personally, know one woman (a cousin of my mother's) who escaped from the Good Shepherds in Cork who was apprehended at Rosslare by the Gardaí and returned to the 'home'. She wasn't an unwed mother. She was over 18. She was put in there by her mother for refusing to marry her mother's boyfriend and give the outward appearance to respectability to that relationship.

She married him and went from the church to the boat and has never lived in Ireland again. The happy couple of Mother-in-law plus son-in-law remained together until his death in the 1980s. Although they too moved to the UK in the late 1970s but that was to escape creditors....

Why aren't those incidents being investigated?

There wasn't ANY law to back any of that up from what I can see anyway.

Stopped for what?
Under what authority?

That's crazy and really very worrying.

I think what we're unearthing here is evidence of the existence of fascism.

Bannasidhe

People did act... but they were voices crying in the wilderness.

Dr Deeny died in Rosslare, Co Wexford in April 1994 but prior to his death in 1989 published his memoir 'To Cure and to Care' in which he described his dealings with the home.

He wrote: "Going through returns for infant deaths in Cork, I noticed that there was something unusual and traced the matter to a home for unmarried mothers at Bessborough outside the city."

He visited the home, and noted: "Every baby had some purulent infection of the skin and all had green diarrhoea, carefully covered up.

"There was obviously a staphylococcus infection about.

"Without any legal authority I closed the place down and sacked the matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer.

"The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing."

A few days later he had a visit in Dublin from the nuns' "man of affairs" and he was followed by the Dean of Cork, Monsignor Sexton. Finally, the Bishop of Cork complained to the Papal Nuncio, who went to see Eamon de Valera.

"The Nuncio, Archbishop Robinson, saw my report and said we were quite right in our action," Dr Deeny wrote.

- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/extraordinary-doctor-stood-up-to-clergy-and-closed-home-30344924.html#sthash.dyIH6UX3.dpuf

Nuncio (officially known as an Apostolic nuncio and also known as a papal nuncio) is the title for an ecclesiastical diplomat, being an envoy or permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See to a state or international organization

This begs the question - what the blue blazes did it have to do with the diplomatic envoy from The Vatican? .... Unless they were involved?