The Kerry Babies Case

It's his anniversary in a couple of weeks, I wonder are they building up to make an announcement then...

Yeah but that poster doesn't care one bit as long as they get to look down on people they consider inferior to them.

They do the same thing constantly in Personal Issues and Work Issues too. It's a bit disturbing tbh.

How they haven't been banned years ago is a mystery to say the least.

Or maybe afterwards, the media nearly always print something around his anniversary, same with Ann Lovett

They were absolutely not upholding any kind of Catholic morality. Some priests and bishops are an absolute disgrace, then and now. Same with guards, doctors teachers - and every other profession.

From what I hear it seems that a son of the couple was caught for some minor offence over in the US & over there they take both fingerprints & DNA sample. When the body of Baby John was exhumed in 2020-21 I cant recall, the DNA sample was put up on a US database hence how the match was linked back to the couple. A liaison officer was sent to the US to notify their son of their recent arrest before it became public.

I did qualify what I said by ending what I said with the word ‘apparently’, meaning that no, I don’t believe for a minute that people were imbeciles or that they didn’t know what was going on or that common practice wasn’t common knowledge. It was just never spoken of, in order to maintain appearances and their ‘standing’ or status within their communities as pious sorts that butter wouldn’t melt.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that one should never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, and there is a point where only malice can explain the phenomenon of national amnesia in relation to what went on at the time, that’s now being attempted to be attributed to the Church, when in reality the Church did the dirty work of burying people’s secrets and ensuring the evidence remained out of sight of polite society. It’s easily understandable why people wouldn’t want to acknowledge what was common practice at the time and pretend they didn’t know anything about it, because they fear being judged, and if there’s a scapegoat available like Joanne Hayes and the idea of ‘superfundication’, there’s a mass sigh of relief that the spotlight isn’t shone on the wider community who were up to their necks in it.

That applies in Dublin as much as it does anywhere else, I’m not sure why you think I’d make an exception for Dublin, I grew up in a small village in the arsehole of nowhere in Ireland, and shìt went on, and being a child at the time I thought people didn’t know, I had a limited perspective precisely because I was a child and I couldn’t have known how widespread things that went on behind closed doors were at the time. I thought it was only in my own family and nobody knew, and everyone turned up to mass on a Sunday and we did the whole GAA thing and sure my parents were pillars of their community.

Two decades later and much to my own embarrassment, frustration and humiliation, I discovered that people knew bloody well everything, they just never said anything because they didn’t want to get involved, they didn’t want to bring any trouble on themselves. I also as a child imagined my own family circumstances were extraordinary, something else which later turned out to be less true the more people I talked to where I didn’t share my own experiences because I was embarrassed, and when they shared theirs I still wasn’t going to share mine, because it wasn’t and wouldn’t have been appropriate, like it would have been perceived as attempting to diminish or undermine their far worse experiences than my own. I can understand why anyone would want to dismiss it as bonkers, nonsense, and pretend it didn’t happen, because it’s a pretty ugly reality and nobody wants to believe it happened, similar to the way in which people at the time didn’t want to believe Cynthia Owen as a child when she tried to tell people what was going on, and only later when there was incontrovertible evidence which proved she wasn’t lying, would anyone actually admit that they knew what was happening, as long as their name was kept out of the papers, obviously.

There’s a reason I mention it was important for them that their name was kept out of the papers, because they had lived full lives in that time and had their own personal experiences that they would rather remain buried along with everything else that was buried at the time and kept out of official records, and instead official documents would record a sanitised version of events such as the official reports from what were then institutions for people who were no more than children themselves, and anyone else whom it was perceived didn’t fit into polite society, or was a ‘drain on society’, an expression as commonly used today to refer to groups of people in society who are perceived that way, as it was then. Contraceptives being more widely available in the 70’s merely put a dint in the reduction of numbers in these institutions, it wasn’t until the mid-2000’s really when most of these institutions were simply no longer required and faded out due to dwindling numbers of residents. It wasn’t at all because Ireland suddenly became more enlightened overnight and abandoned the Church in their droves because of the abuse scandals in the mid-nineties. It was simply because the services of the Church were no longer required by the State (they still are in relation to education where the Church still dominates by a considerable majority and some social services still funded by the State, but that’s another discussion of it’s own entirely).

There will be plenty of people who reject your proposition that the circumstances being discussed now existed at all at that time, and the few who will reject it because they know it wasn’t just of that time, and it still goes on, behind closed doors, and people know it goes on and still keep it to themselves, and rarely a scapegoat appears that they can point fingers at and sit in judgment, relieved that it takes the spotlight off themselves, and how terrible it is the way someone else who isn’t them behaves and should have their children taken from them and all the rest of it. Watching Prime Time only a couple of months ago and it stuck with me how one mother being interviewed explains that her case worker told her when she saw her daughter, to pretend ‘for her daughters sake’ that she didn’t know her. This is today, in modern Ireland. When Margaret Cash went public, there were calls for her children to be removed from her care then too, and if they were available today, she and her children would be in one of these institutions and half a century later there would be people tutting about how terribly she and her children were treated.

I say half a century, but even though most of these institutions had faded out of existence by the mid-nineties, a few of them were simply rebranded, and the residents who were in their 80’s by the time I met them in the mid-2000’s were there all their lives, and had known no different. These institutions had become their homes, and it was because the Church wanted to sell the property that I was involved because I was involved in a homeless charity at the time which had been tasked with relocating these women in their 80’s. They too had the official version of events, which they rattled off as though they had memorised it word for word, recorded on official documents, and then they had the version which was far more complicated and detailed and was nearly 80 years worth of their own personal history of experiences, which wasn’t sanitised. It wasn’t all misery and doom and gloom and they had some stories which had me in stitches laughing, and then there were the rare glimpses they allowed me to have into the far darker side of their experiences in these institutions. I understood why too they didn’t want me to know, in the same way as I don’t want my son to know what his grandparents were like, because he’s only ever known the side of them that he sees, which isn’t the side of them that I know, and I’d rather he didn’t know because I don’t want him to have to carry that stuff around in his head, because it’s **** really, there’s just no nicer way of putting that.

It’s a human coping mechanism, that’s all, not unique or limited by geographic or political boundaries or considerations, and that’s why it applies as much in Dublin as it does anywhere else, like Cahirciveen where either there’s an unusually high proportion of babies who were discovered and people who were treated like shìt, or it Cahirciveen is no different to anywhere else, only elsewhere they were just better at making sure the evidence stays buried. I certainly don’t think they’re imbeciles, even though they act as though they are when confronted with a reality they would rather not have to contend with as it makes people uncomfortable.

Ireland's attitude to woman in the past was disgraceful. The way the church ran mother and baby homes and the treatment of mothers and their babies can in no way be defended. The lack of compassion shown by the church goes against everything they were preaching - disgusting behaviour.

However shame of pregnancy outside if marriage was only one issue - money was another - there was no help or very little available from social welfare system. What people sometimes don't realise is that many of the babies ( not all)were better off adopted and actually had better lives than had they been allowed stay with their birth parents. Many babies had they been allowed stay with their mother would have had dreadful lives - imagine a child finding out they were the result of rape or incest. However forced adoptions were not the answer. Of course all children should have the right to know their parents information but adoptees looking on with rose tinted glasses about how their life could have been which sadly isn't reality. Also society should have made the fathers more accountable - nothing it seems were thought bad about the fathers, things would have been different if men had have been shamed too. For sure the church should have done it differently - they should have shown acceptance, love, compassion and empathy. Unfortunately the opposite was done. Of course families had a big role to play in this aswell. I know lots of examples ( some in my own family) where babies were kept and the mother was helped with the raising of the child.

I'm talking about pre 1960s above. Things did change after that when social welfare seen they needed to help.

Sounds a far fetched story.

Does that mean that, say someone who joins the Gardaí and has their DNA on a database that DNA cannot be used in this case?

Today's Sindo says relatives are to be interviewed, so Gardaí may be looking for third party/s involvement, (grandparents, aunts and uncles of Baby John?)

If it was a third party the parents spent the last 40 years covering up for a family member who may well be dead by now.

The sibling whose DNA led to the arrests was younger than Baby John, so could be any age from 13 to 38, maybe the secret was known among the family and someone decided to give it up?

This Extra.ie report says the DNA results were known before the arrested couple were released.

This is the information on the 3 indexes of stored DNA.

• 1. A reference index: which contains the DNA profiles of people who gave DNA samples under the 2014 Act, and people who gave samples under the repealed Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence) Act 1990
• 2. A crime scene index: which contains samples taken from crime scenes
• 3 elimination indexes: which are used to eliminate certain people’s DNA from an investigation. One elimination index has DNA samples from staff of Forensic Science Ireland, another has samples from Gardaí, and the last has samples from prescribed persons. Prescribed persons are other people who may have contaminated DNA samples in the course of their work.

Or maybe they want to solve the murder of an innocent baby.

This is from today's Sunday Times.

The legal firm acting for the couple arrested in connection with the murder of Baby John, the infant found stabbed to death in Kerry almost 40 years ago, have retained two senior counsel to defend their clients should they be charged.

Padraig O’Connell, a solicitor from Killarney, Co Kerry, who is representing the couple, last night confirmed that he had retained the two defence counsel on behalf of his clients.

The couple, who have been identified as the child’s biological parents by DNA tests, have denied any involvement in the murder of the newborn, who was found in a plastic bag on White Strand beach near Cahersiveen in April 1984.

“They have left their home and not returned to work as the garda investigation continues. We have heard nothing from the state since the arrests and do not have the results of the DNA tests on the samples they provided,” said O’Connell yesterday.

The retention of senior defence barristers is indicative of the complex nature of the Baby John case, which presents unique difficulties for gardai and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). It suggests the couple are taking precautionary action to safeguard their rights should gardai seek a direction to charge them.

The garda investigation had expected that the couple might voluntarily outline what had happened in 1984 following their arrest last month but they instead retained their right to silence for most of their interviews. They both strenuously denied any involvement in murder whilst under caution, however.

The couple, who have two adult children but are not married, cannot be charged with failure to report the child’s birth because of legal issues, but legal and security sources say it is likely the parents will face charges.

Hayes was issued a government apology in 2018

“This baby was murdered and its body was found washed up on a beach. It was stabbed to death. It’s a desperately sad story, but the parents cannot say it’s nothing to do with us and decide to stay silent,” said a garda with knowledge of the investigation. “There may be extenuating circumstances but the baby was still murdered and someone must be held accountable for that.” The outcome of the investigation is further complicated by previous investigations, which have been discredited.

In 2018, the government issued a full apology on behalf of the state to Joanne Hayes — a local woman wrongly accused of murdering the baby — and her siblings over their treatment. She had been accused by gardai of being the mother of Baby John and murdering him. Her family were accused of concealing the birth.

“Is the evidence collected at the time now tainted?” said one source familiar with the inquiry. “ Can anything gathered at the time by gardai be relied upon. The file may yet have to be examined by a senior barrister for the State. The overriding consideration at the end of the day may ultimately rest on whether it’s in the public interest to charge this couple given the time that’s elapsed.”

The source added: “Consideration will also have to be given to the likelihood of anyone being sent to prison, even if they are convicted, given the circumstances.”

Both suspects were previously unknown to gardai.

The investigation into the unsolved case is now intensifying as gardai try to identify people who knew the couple in the 1980s. Among them is a garda officer who had general knowledge of the investigation, but who is now deceased.

The couple remain the focus of the investigation, though gardai are trying to establish with some degree of certainty if Baby John was stabbed to death by a third party.

The investigation team is understood to have built up a detailed picture of the couple’s history and family tree. Detectives are preparing to approach potential witnesses to see if they might co-operate.

Gardai in Tralee are continuing to appeal to anyone with information to come forward.

Gardai last week said that hundreds of people had been interviewed as part of the new investigation, with more than 560 lines of inquiry initiated. Superintendent Flor Murphy, who is leading the inquiry, said that the two arrests marked a “significant development” in the investigation.

“I am again appealing to the public for any information in relation to the death of Baby John in 1984,” he said. “Anyone who comes forward will be treated with sensitivity and compassion.”

Speaking as a teenager of the 60s and 70s I can tell you there was also plenty of happy sex going on .... quite willingly by both parties. We just hoped for the best, some of us were lucky or maybe a bit wiser and avoided getting pregnant. But yes sadly there were the other cases too. And unfortunately those girls (not the lads) had to bear the consequences and make heartbreaking decisions.