The Kerry Babies Case

I was only referring to knowledge of the event. I was not suggesting he had any direct involvement in the death of the baby.

He probably had the information to spare the Hayes family what they went through

I agree. There are 2 separate crimes here.

• The murder of baby John - which the parents may or may not be guilty of. I believe we will never know the truth here.
• The keeping quiet for 39 years and allowing another womans life to be ruined. There are no excuses for this. There should be consequences for them.

Would throwing it overboard be a safer option re not being seen,. Stopping a vehicle to throw something ‘over a cliff’ is not without a risk of being seen

Could be anyone offended by the lack of justice for baby John and the undertaker's crass decision to add the "I forgive" inscription to the headstone, I mean WTF does he think he is?

When the inscription stopped being replaced the attacks stopped.

This is the man who was one of the first on the scene, who “named” the child John, placed a headstone and tended the grave.

It appears this man showed more kindness and compassion to John in death than was shown to him in life. The inscription may have been misguided but frankly your ire towards him is completely undeserved.

Well I can put put myself in their shoes and I'd feel utterly shamed and rotten to the core, morally corrupt to keep quiet on such a matter whilst watching others take a battering. You'd have to be morally corrupt to think otherwise I think.

A file is being prepared for the DPP.

We don't know how long that takes or how long the DPP takes to make a decision.

So you'll just have to wait for the process to take it's course.

Are you ok with that, or do you want something now?

But why do you want to know?

What difference will it make to you?

I'm going to contradict this that I posted earlier in the thread. The pathologist on " For Ann Lovett..." said it was not all that unusual to hide a pregnancy from everyone - family, friends, room mates etc. she knew of at least 5. it's about 10 mins into this documentary;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39KU7Agwmis

>It is true. I was only interested in countering your assertion that these places “did a lot of good”, a vague assertion that you choose to back up with a single anecdote, ignoring the mountains of evidence from the very same sources you’re using to make your argument which suggests otherwise -

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/ireland-s-proportion-of-unmarried-mothers-in-homes-was-probably-highest-in-world-1.4456279

A high rate of single mothers in such places is not proof in its self that they were harmful. So I don’t know why you share that link. Also, that study, interesting as it is, only refers to the late 1950s and suffers from a dearth of comparative data. We don’t know how common this was across Europe.

>Of course there was a lot more to it than just the social climate of the time in which pregnancy outside of wedlock caused considerable consternation not only among families due to concerns about their social status, but also among politicians who purported to be guided by religious morality in dealing with the issue of illegitimate children. “Pretend they don’t exist” appears to have been the order of the day, and in order to enforce that view in Irish society, what were once the poorhouses became institutions where what were considered social ills at the time could be hidden away from polite society where nobody cared what happened to them as long as they were out of sight and didn’t serve as a daily reminder of a cruel and sadistic society -

https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/mother-and-baby-home-st-patricks-2380868-Oct2015/

This statement denies the agency of the many young mothers who volunteered to come to this institutions, often in difficult circumstances. Society that was cruel in the sense that people struggled and the conditions were often dismal in some of these institutions and dismal for the kids boarded out. It was also cruel in the sense that rapists who got these women pregnant usually escaped scot free, but the sisters running these homes were making society more humane in most cases.

>I didn’t imply that being a single mother was impossible, that’s yet another strawman of your own invention to distract from the fact that unmarried mothers were viewed as moral failures, and they and their children were viewed as burdens on society, in the same way as they are today in some quarters, without the influence of the Church to fall back on as an excuse for how those people regard unmarried mothers and their children.

So society was bad for reasons that still exist? Hardly shows that they were unsually cruel times?

>As for your ridiculously specific claim that I’m unaware that in the 20th century most unmarried mothers kept their babies, while admitting that most babies born to unmarried mothers were adopted, except for 2-4 exceptional years in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, yet again you’re using all sorts of conditions which suit your argument, which have nothing to do with the figures for unmarried mothers who had no other choice but to enter the homes due to the lack of support from their families who were more concerned about their daughters specifically not bringing shame on the family and being a burden on the family. Does the 20th century not consist of the period between 1900 and 2000, or am I missing a few decades? Because even then in order to force the father to maintain their illegitimate offspring, a mother had to prove in open court that he was indeed the father, something which many women just weren’t prepared to do as it would again… you guessed it - bring shame upon the family -

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1930/act/17/enacted/en/print.html

My comment had a typo. Most kids born outside marriage were not adopted except in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. I am surprised you did not know this.

As abhorrent and tragic as it is by today’s standards, it was pretty much the standard at the time during that period in Irish history when people were just as interested then in maintaining their social status as they are today. The mere passage of time hasn’t changed much, only that the services provided to the State by these institutions, are no longer required by the State is all.

Good post.

And you would have to hope that any conclusion in the year 2023, is not conveniently swept under the carpet.

Wrong country for that, though.

My guess is we will hear from the DPP in the next two months.

If they intend to bring charges, we should hear before the end of July.

If not, they will try to slip the news out as quietly as possible in August in the hope that everyone will have forgotten the issue by the time the Dáil resumes in September.

Baby John's grave had been desecrated a number of times before the headstone with "I forgive" replaced the little wooden cross. The "I forgive" on the stone had nothing to do with the attacks on the grave. It was vandalised for the last time in 2004 when the stone was smashed. The stone had been put there the previous February. If whoever did it was "not happy with the wall of silence" they were happy enough to keep it that way for the next 14 or so years.

Tom Cournane has unfinished work, his last act for Baby John is to put John's full name on that stone at the behest of his parents.

Honestly......why would you even post this.

We may never find out the full truth