An Irish inquiry into homes for unmarried mothers run by the Catholic Church from 1922 to 1998 found an “appalling level of infant mortality”
At least nine thousand children died in the so-called Mother and baby homes.
A minister confirmed this week, that the Irish government would formally apologize after the new inquiry detailed the horror experienced by unmarried mothers and their children at the Church- and local authority-run homes.
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The report said the homes provided refuge for the mothers who had nowhere else to go. However they faced emotional torment at the hands of the nuns.
RT reports: A “stifling, oppressive and brutally misogynistic culture” existed for decades in such institutions, Ireland’s Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, said in a statement released on the publication of the report after an official inquiry into the sites.
The Commission of Investigation said it found an “appalling level of infant mortality” across the homes, with at least 9,000 child deaths.
O’Gorman added that the government would provide financial support to specific people highlighted by the extensive report into the suffering and death rates at the homes.
The passing of a law allowing the exhumation of the remains of children buried at the homes will also be brought forward, he added, and, where possible, they will be identified.
Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes were set up in the 19th and 20th centuries for women and girls who became pregnant outside of marriage, including victims of sexual assault. The last of the institutions closed in the 1990s.
The terrible conditions at these homes drew global attention after a mass grave of 796 babies’ bodies was discovered at one of the homes in the western Ireland town of Tuam in 2017, following research by a local historian, Catherine Corless.
On Tuesday, the Irish government published a 2,865-page report by the Commission of Investigation into mother-and-baby homes, which looked into the conditions at 18 of the institutions between 1922 and 1998.
It listed multiple failings at some of the homes, including typhoid outbreaks, food that was “unfit for consumption,” and abuse from some of the “inmates,” with one example cited of a mother of two children who became pregnant “apparently by a male ‘inmate.’”
Mortality rates in mother-and-baby homes were almost twice the national average for illegitimate children in 1945 and 1946, the report stated.
Some 9,000 children died in the institutions – 15 percent of those who lived there – the Commission said, adding that local and national authorities were informed of the high death rates.
Mother-and-baby homes in Tuam and the town of Kilrush are among the worst examples identified in the report, which described the “appalling physical conditions” of the institutions in both areas.
The inquiry was launched six years ago after evidence of an unmarked mass graveyard at Tuam, County Galway, was uncovered by amateur local historian Catherine Corless.
Niamh Harris
OK. Now let’s talk about the DUMS the Lizard Looking Communist Senators use for trafficking children. Funny how this is never discussed.
Oh for Goda sake How stupid are people ? Dont they read history ? Always the same always the opposite . Go when you’ve a few weeks to kill and collect t all tbe stories ,the evidence collate it and it will make an encyclopedia of evil.