The Angels plot of the Mother and Babies Home in Tuam Co Galway on Saturday

The excavation of a the possible site of a mass grave in the grounds of the  Tuam Mother and Baby home has begun.

But have they identified the right plot?

Izzy Kamikaze writes:

A few weeks ago, I was happy to hear an excavation was starting at the site of the Mother & Baby Home in Tuam.

Then I saw where the hoarding went up.

I have information that suggests they’re digging in the wrong place and I know the Commission of Inquiry into Mother & Baby Homes has that information too.

It’s hard to know how to react. I struggled with feelings of powerlessness and despair. Is the hoarding in the wrong place accidentally or on purpose?

Whose interests does it serve? In a country that ‘apologises’ to Magdalene women, then tries to swindle them out of the medical care they were promised, the line between conspiracy and cock up is very hard to find.

…When corruption at the top gets to people at the bottom of the pile, it tells us we don’t matter. We might see what’s happening, but we can’t change anything, we’re too small and unimportant.

Nobody will believe us. Nobody will hear us. There’s nothing we can do. If the people at the top don’t want change and the people at the bottom think they can’t make change, then change doesn’t happen. That’s how the country that once led the world in locking up inconvenient people becomes the world leader in letting sleeping dogs lie.

The time for letting sleeping dogs lie at Tuam is over.

We’re meant to feel powerless, but we are not powerless.

[Historian] Catherine Corless, who documented 796 deaths at the Tuam Children’s Home, is not powerless.

Adopted people denied information about their origins are not powerless. Women whose children were taken are not powerless. We can expose what’s hidden. We can make change.

One way we can make change is to appeal to those who do have power and to do so publicly. We can make it impossible for people in power to say they didn’t know what was going on and what they needed to do to put it right.

So, I’ve written a letter to Katherine Zappone, who’s currently the Minister for Children, but I’ve also written it to you. In it, I tell her (and you) that

Witness descriptions of burials at Tuam confirm there is more than one burial site.

One witness description of burials closely matches disused sewage tanks below the site (formerly a 19th century workhouse.) These tanks are outside the area being investigated.

Witness descriptions of a second burial site may describe either a section of the 19th century sewage system or the 20th century septic tank which replaced it. Only the 20th century tank is within the area being investigated.

An area which may contain burials is under an access laneway used by cars. This may be destroying evidence and is also potentially dangerous to drivers and pedestrians.

If underground structures at the site in Tuam were not properly treated when the housing estate was built, there is serious risk of them collapsing, causing injury or death to users of the area which includes a children’s playground.

Failure to find bodies at Tuam, or to find the number of bodies there should be (which is in excess of 800) may indicate that deaths were falsified in order to facilitate illegal adoptions.

It’s a long letter [full text below], but easy to read, so put the kettle on and make some time. Come back to it later, if you need to.

But please don’t read this just as an appeal to the power of the Minister. It’s an appeal to your personal power, the power they try to make you believe you don’t have.

A letter to the Minister with responsibility for the Tuam Babies (Izzy Kamikaze)

Previously: ‘The Septic Tank Was In This Location’

Troubling

Pic: Andy Newman via Tuam In Pictures