Our Worst Fears

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File Photo A preliminary excavation is to take place at the site of a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway. The tests were requested by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, whichÊwas establishedÊfollowing allegations about the deaths of 800 babies and the manner in which they were buried in Tuam. The commission says the test excavation will take around five weeks to complete. ItÊsays a sample of ground will be excavated by a team of specialist archaeologists. It is hoped the work will help resolve queries in relation to the burial of babies at the site in question.05/06/2014. Tuam mother and baby home infant deaths. The grounds where the unmarked mass grave containing the remains of nearly 800 infants who died at the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam Co Galway from 1925-1961 rests. The site is now part of the Dublin Road housing estate and records show that the former mother and baby home's septic tank was in this location. The names of the children buried here have been confirmed by local historian Catherine Corless' research and she hopes to raise funds to erect a plaque as a memorial to them. Photo: Laura Hutton/RollingNews.ie

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0296 Katherine Zappone_90504420

“This is very sad and disturbing news. It was not unexpected as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years. Up to now we had rumours. Now we have confirmation that the remains are there, and that they date back to the time of the Mother and Baby Home, which operated in Tuam from 1925 to 1961.”

Katherine Zappone (above centre), Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, this morning.

More as we get it.

Human remains found at Tuam former mother-and-baby home (RTÉ)

Previously: ‘It Seems Quite Probable The Babies Are Buried In The Sewage Tanks’

Reputable History

Meanwhile…
saskiaprone

letter2-1

A response from Terry Prone (top right) to French documentary maker Saskia Weber (left) concerning the Tuam burial site in 2014.

Ms Prone was on RTÉ’s Radio One’s Today with Sean O’ Rourke show as the story broke.

Sean O’Rourke: “I think, Terry Prone, I see something here from the Journal, you were saying previously, or was it quoting the Sisters of Bon Secours, saying they wouldn’t find a mass grave, or anything like that. What’s your response?”

Terry Prone: “No, no, no. This was – first of all, I don’t speak for the Sisters of Bon Secours, my company deals with the Sisters. But what is important about this is, nobody expected the kind of numbers that are being revealed today, clearly there was extensive burial,
I’m fascinated by the Commission’s use of the term in this way, because it makes it sound like there was a disrespectful mass-burial, rather than proper burial, which, I don’t know what to make of that. I think the questions that are going to be asked in the next while are, how many children, and what was the number of children, because this wasn’t a Famine burial, like the local people tend to talk about. This was between the thirties and the sixties, which would be in the time the home operated. How many children and toddlers were there, and is that disproportionate to the amount of children that were dying in the general population at this time. And the other thing [hushed tones] – what did they die of? Was it malnutrition, was it lack of care, what was it that killed the children?”

O’Rourke: “I’m still trying to process this myself. There was a request from documentary makers from France2 to the Sisters of Bon Secours asking for access, and the response from you was that there would be no mass burials to be found on the grounds, only bones where Famine victims were buried. It looks like there’s a bit more to it than that now.”

Prone: “It looks like there’s a whole lot more to it.”

Listen here

Meanwhile…

File Photo . More Bones have been found at the Tuam mother and Baby site End ..05/06/2014. Tuam mother and baby home infant deaths. Local Tuam historian Catherine Corless, pictured beside a grotto in the grounds where the unmarked mass grave containing the remains of nearly 800 infants who died at the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home from 1925-1961 rests. The site is now part of the Dublin Road housing estate and records show that the former mother and baby home's septic tank was in this location. The names of the children buried here have been confirmed by Corless' research and she hopes to raise funds to erect a plaque as a memorial to them. Photo: Laura Hutton/RollingNews.ie

Historian Catherine Corless

Oh.

Tuam mother and baby home: the trouble with the septic tank story (Rosita Boland, Irish Times June 7, 2014)

Meanwhile…

“The Survivor Community is not shocked by the latest news that hundreds of bodies of babies and children have been “discovered” at the site of the former Mother and Baby home at Tuam. This is something we have known for many years.

What is shocking is that once again we have to learn of this news via the media. The communications skills of the Minister and the Commission of Inquiry leave a lot to be desired when it comes to informing the Survivor Community of developments.

Tuam must not be seen in isolation. It was the fifth biggest of the 9 so called “Mother and Baby Homes” and it is the tip of the iceberg for deaths which amount to at least 6,000 babies and children across the 9 homes.

There are over 227 confirmed deaths in the notorious Bethany Home in Dublin and recent research has revealed the names of over 200 babies and children buried in the Angel’s Plot at Castlepollard Mother and Baby home ranging from a few hours old to over 2 years.

There were also at least 77 confirmed Stillbirths in Castlepollard above and beyond the 200 registered deaths. There will be hundreds of unregistered Stillbirths discovered in Tuam too above and beyond the 800 registered deaths.

The worst is yet to come as details of the huge behemoths of Saint Patrick’s, Bessboro and Sean Ross Abbey have yet to be revealed but it is likely that the total for these three “homes” alone will be well over 4,000 babies and children buried in shoeboxes and rags.

Our Community is divided about the issue of excavations and exhumations. Many are adamant that all the babies must be exhumed, identified and given proper burials.

Others feel strongly that our former crib mates should be allowed to Rest In Peace. There are no easy answers and some survivors will be horrified no matter what happens. Mutual respect and understanding must guide our community.

The Government, Minister Zappone and the Inquiry must consider living survivors and their needs before any further excavations are pursued behind our backs.

Our community is ageing and has been viciously cut in two by the current official policy of excluding many survivors from the Inquiry.

Survivors need to be heard instead of ignored; consulted instead of insulted; treated with respect instead of learning the latest developments via the media.

May our crib mates in all the Mother and Baby homes and Holding Centers, Rest In Peace.”

Paul Redmond
Chairperson: Coalition of Mother and Baby home Survivors (CMABS)

Rollingnews

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177 thoughts on “Our Worst Fears

    1. dav

      something about forgiveness from the great invisible fairy monster who lives in the sky and use of the phrase “little angels”, I suspect

        1. Pluto

          BUT BUT abortion is murder!!!

          So the church forces raped women to carry through with childbirth but then murders the children afterwards.

    2. well

      The likes of Brendan O’Neill of Spiked media and Caroline Farrow should be working on grovelling apologies now.

      Terry Prone should be ruined for this.

      1. Joe cool

        If Terry prone wasn’t ruined by everything else, this is going to do nothing to her. Water from a ducks back

        1. Robert

          Prone’s Boned! LOL!

          But seriously, she’s got such a choke-hold on the media I’m sure she’ll be able to wangle it somehow.

      2. Pablo Pistachio

        I imagine Prone is busy spinning her socks off right now, desperately calling in any favours she can, trying to get other stories pushed to the front pages ahead of this.
        However, this is a story about the mass graves of babies and their attempted cover up. This story isn’t going away any time soon.

        1. Starina

          she’ll probably try to scapegoat a couple of bad eggs but sure the other sweet, gentle and holy nuns didn’t know about it.

        2. realPolithicks

          No doubt the indo will have some breaking news regarding , SF, Gerry Adams and blah blah blah….

        1. Robert

          Reminds me of that old joke about Max Clifford – if he’s so good at PR, how come everybody thinks he’s a ladypart?

          1. :-Joe

            Haha ye, I think he finally went down, not for the lies but for sexual abuse about a year or two/three/idk? ago….?.. Ahh.. Good times… indeed..

            I’ve been waiting patiently for a similar fate to befall Terry the lying scumbag public enemy number one-Pr monster … who is much worse imho…

            Far more machiavellian than that tabloid dope clifford ever was or could be..

            The lone fish(catfish) in a smaller pool eventually gets fat and sloppy making bigger waves, so it won’t be long before the ripples build up and it’s caught out… hook line and sinker.

            Scumbags running wild all over the place….

            :-J

      3. Daddy

        “Terry Prone should be ruined for this.”

        Nothing ruins her because she knows too much about everyone.

        Some day, something will come out about her that does ruin her. She is bound to piss off someone more powerful and influential than her.

    3. Deluded

      Prone, Fergus Finlay and Ruth Coppinger were discussing it on RTÉ radio today.
      The Angelus was a minute late because of it.

      1. :-Joe

        Yer one-Pr monster has a letter from the vatican allowing her to enroach on the brainwash cycle and delay the angelus by up to five minutes if necessary….

        Something to do with her helping the pope out with an out-of-control online gambling / candy crush type game problem…

        It’s all part of gawd’s plan…

        :-J

    4. Deluded

      “Let’s see what they died of.”
      Prone sounded very concerned.
      (The argument is that the evidence will be vague and some of them died of common ailments and sure it was common practice to dump dead kids and it’s the same as abortion).
      One of the blokes recited a list of the Other Party who supported the church.
      They haven’t tied it to Enda’s leadership yet.

  1. Formerly known as @ireland.com

    Someone, please explain why any religious organisation should be involved in Irish schools, in 2017.

    1. mildred st. meadowlark

      Many +1 on this.

      Yet another reason why church and state should not be mixed.

    2. dav

      because they have the power to abuse and kill vulnerable children, and nobody in this country really gives a damn.

      1. Rugbyfan

        The abject fear of those associated with God and their congregation is also reflected in the attitudes of some politician!

    3. :-Joe

      Think about it… where else are they going to get naive unquestioning young minds that they can rape and manipulate into the system….?

      :-J

    1. :-Joe

      A multi-milennial inter generational pantomime creation of the human mind to stop dumb people from going mad and killing the more evolved members of the population?

      How’s that?….

      :-J

  2. kid jensen

    didnt that outstanding journo from the mail who brings her kids to funerals cover this in the past

    1. Robert

      Yeah it was her broke the story in the first place. But it was based on circumstantial information. Now there’s actual ..ugh … evidence.

  3. Pablo Pistachio

    We all remember the groups and a certain PR company that continually told us there was nothing there, that they will find nothing. It’s time to go after those people.

  4. Daisy Chainsaw

    Abused from day one. No nuns died of malnutrition, yet so many infants did.

    Prolife my fupping arse.

  5. olllie

    Let me guess, the remains of several bodies have been found which is exactly what everyone knew would be found.
    The question is this: Why was this site not sealed off and forensically examined by the Gardaí when the information first came to light?
    Who are they protecting this time?
    By the way ” certain PR company” is Terry Prone’s company.

    Oh, I think I might have copied and pasted the above sentence from somewhere else, sorry!

      1. Daisy Chainsaw

        Because they were only the human detrius written off by the catholic church. Unimportant and unsuitable for sale, they were left malnourished and if they died, so what. If they survived, there was always institutional child slavery, making rosary beads, or being sent to work on local farms (Ask BO’B about Artane) and, of course, a future of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

  6. olllie

    “We will honour their memory and make sure that we take the right actions now to treat their remains appropriately,” Zapone added.

    So, human remains found = coroner, post mortem, Garda investigation
    Or
    Memorial mass and a quick burial, platitudes, aul’ wans with candles.

  7. Barry the Hatchet

    Surprise sur-fupping-prise. No doubt the religious will still attempt to claim no knowledge of this. And sure wasn’t it a different time, etc etc. Horrific.

  8. Joe cool

    So where to from here?. let me guess. An enquiry that lasts 5 yrs. Then a further 3 yrs (because the solicitors and lawyers need paying first.). Then a re-dress board set up taking another 3 yrs. . Then a strung out process taking 2 to 3 yrs to find anyone that requires redress. In the meantime anyone entitled to redress will have died, or be on the verge of death. Taoiseach stands up in dail eireann , apologises and states it won’t happen again. No one gets compensation because it’s taken nearly 11 yrs and they are all dead anyway. Great little country

    1. GiggidyGoo

      Don’t forget that Fitzgerald or her successor will then put the information beyond reach for another 35 years.

  9. newsjustin

    It’s not surprising – given that it was local knowledge that infants were buried there.

    It’s notable that no remains appear to have been found in the septic tank – this was the focus, rightly, of much upset when this story first broke.

    The numbers shouldn’t surprise either – given the evidence around mortality in those homes, anywhere large groups were confined, in the early part of the last century.

    The most pressing questions are – could any of these deaths been prevented, were these deaths recorded properly, and why were the bodies placed in this location…..especially for (presumably baptised) infants…which is relevant given the prevailing theology at the time (unbaptised babies being buried apart….).

      1. newsjustin

        Yes. Certainly. A mass grave, especially of infants, is horrific, whatever the background.

    1. ReproBertie

      “It’s notable that no remains appear to have been found in the septic tank ”

      The second structure is a long structure which is divided into 20 chambers. The commission said it had not yet determined what the purpose of this structure was but it appeared to be a sewage tank. The commission had also not yet determined if it was ever used for this purpose. In this second structure, significant quantities of human remains have been discovered in at least 17 of the 20 underground chambers which were examined.

      http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-babies-significant-quantities-of-human-remains-found-at-former-home-1.2996599

      1. Ultan

        NewsJustIn will point out that he/she said Septic tank, not sewage tank, so he/she isn’t full of it at all at all. And as he/she said “this was the focus, rightly, of much upset when this story first broke.” So nothing major to see here, just the remains of hundreds of children. No controversy in that surely?

      2. newsjustin

        So it may have been an unused, underground concrete structure. The idea of using (or repurposing) underground structures for burials isn’t a new one.

        The questions I mentioned above are still relevant IMHO. I’d like to know how nuns could have overseen the burial of baptised infants in un-consecrated ground without appropriate rites(?) I’m probably very naive, but would have thought that would be their priority……even more so than recording the deaths to civil authorities.

        1. ReproBertie

          That’s the heart of the matter right enough. Were these young Irish citizens buried in a unmarked mass grave given the appropriate rites when being buried in their unmarked mass grave?

          1. newsjustin

            It’s quite an important piece of “circumstantial” evidence all right that would indicate the attitude of the nuns that ran the home towards these infants. Using a single grave for lots of people – especially infants – is not uncommon. The question is, and I haven’t seen any evidence either way (correct me if I’m wrong), were these deaths officially recorded? And, yes, were they given the appropriate rites when buried…..rather than being “dumped” as people are suggesting.

          2. well

            newsjustin

            Stop calling it a grave or even a mass grave. Graves are marked. This was covered up.

          3. ReproBertie

            It was the inability to find burial records to match the death certificates that drove Catherine Corless to pursue this. That means the deaths were recorded before the dead babies and infants were dumped in unmarked graves.

      1. Barry the Hatchet

        Fair play to Catherine Corless. She cannot be praised enough for her work on bringing this story to light. She has more integrity, more curiosity, more intelligence and more dedication than most of the journalists in this country put together.

        1. Andy

          She does, and she also clarified to the Irish Times that she never said babies were “dumped” in a “septic tank” which is how the story spread initially. As for it being a cover up. She accumulated the list from public death certs. Her issue was with a lack of burial certs.

          http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393

          And while everyone will criticize the church and nuns, no one should forget that it was Irish families who sent their daughters and sisters to these homes largely out of shame. Regular Irish families.

          I look forward to reading the inquiry report in ten years or whenever it gets done.

          1. jusayinlike

            “it was Irish families who sent their daughters there probably out of shame”

            Yes, but mainly due to the direction of the local priest..

          2. Susan Lanigan

            I agree with Andy’s point that the scandal cannot be conveniently confined to the religious orders, but is deeply intertwined with Irish society and repressive views on women’s sexuality. However the article he quotes from is a denialising whitewash of foreign correspondents’ concerns (out of an injured sense of Irish amour propre mixed with a rather parochial contempt) and it is my understanding that both Catherine Corless and her daughter Adrienne have stated that it misrepresents their message.

            Catherine Corless is saying that she did not speak disrespectfully of the dead children.

            The article is saying that all them furriners telling us our bizness should go away and stop losing the run of themselves.

          3. AnAccountant

            “no one should forget that it was Irish families who sent their daughters and sisters to these homes largely out of shame.”

            Right, and why were they ashamed? Would it have anything to do with the Church dictating what people should feel shame about, do you think?

          4. Andy

            Here we go, it was all someoneelse’s fault.

            Lets absolve the families because you know, it’s much easier to just hate big bad faceless institutions. No one has any personal responsibility in Ireland.

          5. AnAccountant

            Cool. Let’s get rid of fraud off our statute books. It’s your own fault if you believe someone’s lies. Big, domineering organisations should free to bully, lie, manipulate and intimidate people. We should be blaming their victims. That’s the christian way.

          6. newsjustin

            Andy – didn’t you know? Bishops issued each parish priest and nun with a large butterfly net and strait-jacket for capturing and rounding up pregnant, unmarried women.

            Time and time again doctors, judges, journalists, parents, grandparents, guards, politicians, business people and other citizens tried to rescue these women from the church so that they could live free lives in the welcoming communities they came from. Each time they were thwarted by the church.

            Oh wait. That never happened.

          7. ivan

            Nobody *is* absolving the families but there are two parties to this; you’ve the family who allow this to happen to the child, and you’ve the church, in the form of the local priest, who’d have ‘suggested strongly’ that a certain course be followed.

            it wouldn’t happen nowadays, it did happen then, and if you want to apportion blame, 50/50 is harsh as the family didn’t have the same, er, power as the church. If you went against the priest in Ireland in the 50s, you knew all about it.

          8. ReproBertie

            And why were doctors, judges, journalists, parents, grandparents, guards, politicians, business people and other citizens content to go along with this? Could it have anything to do with the brainwashing from birth into the cult that worshipped an unmarried mother and her child while preaching that unmarried mothers needed to be locked up and their children taken away?

          9. AnAccountant

            “Andy – didn’t you know? Bishops issued each parish priest and nun with a large butterfly net and strait-jacket for capturing and rounding up pregnant, unmarried women.”

            Not content with implying that people have no right to be angry with your fruity little cult, you now want to completely absolve it of guilt and blame its victims for believing the lies your fruity little cult told them.

          10. Sam

            Time and time again doctors, judges, journalists, parents, grandparents, guards, politicians, business people and other citizens tried to rescue these women from the church so that they could live free lives in the welcoming communities they came from. Each time they were thwarted by the church.

            Oh wait. That never happened.

            Amazing… no ‘escapees’ brought back by the Garda then Justin? That’s some interesting revisionism.
            It certainly did happen.
            It also happened with kids. You might look up the case of Kevin Fogarty who escaped twice from Glin industrial school, walked the whole way to Limerick City to his mother, who brought him to a local councillor to show the wounds on his back from the torture he endured.
            Cllr Maguire (non-party) called for a doctor to examine and treat the wounds. The doctor was shocked. A garda arrived and took the victim back to his abusers.
            Cllr Maguire spent the following months demanding answers from the Dept of Justice and Dept of Education and trying to secure the release of young Fogarty.
            he was told to mind his own business, but he persisted, stating that it was his business as Fogarty and his mother were constituents.
            His persistence paid off, and Fogarty was eventually released about a year and a half earlier than scheduled.

          11. Nigel

            It was a social tyranny. All the best sorts of tyranny implicate their own victims. It’s abuse writ large. The whole country was a goddamned Magdalene Laundry.

      2. EightersGonnaEight

        Pull these accounts and you’ll know what it’s really all about:

        Having established a strong presence in the provision of acute healthcare in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries, the sisters of Bon Secours decided to set up the Bon Secours Health System as a limited company to organize and manage the running of the five Hospitals in the group. The Bon Secours Health System was established in 1993 to co-ordinate the management of five hospitals under the care of the Bon Secours sisters.

        Source: http://www.bonsecours.ie/aboutus

    2. Ultan

      The deaths were officially recorded. Local historian Catherine Corless found the many hundreds death notices in the Galway County Council offices. You can find more answers to your questions in this interview with her in the link below. Please watch it and inform yourself:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw4UKfZqTzw

    3. ReproBertie

      Could these deaths have been prevented? Well the death certificates list many as having died of measles and hooping cough but others died from less serious complaints such as laryngitis or abscesses – conditions that may indicate neglect which suggests that they could well have been prevented.

  10. Spaghetti Hoop

    Mass grave confirmed; it sent chilling thoughts even when it was unconfirmed. I hope the investigating Commission do a very thorough job in exposing the barbaric and shameful behavior and those responsible.
    And, much like other clerical scandals, those that COVER UP THE TRUTH are just as responsible for the crime itself.

    1. newsjustin

      What crime do you think was committed? It may be that these deaths were unrecorded – that’s certainly criminal and appalling. But there’s no evidence of any other crimes.

      1. mildred st. meadowlark

        Are you really trying to defend this? Are you fcucking joking? Between Cian on the Grace thread, and you here, do you realise what you are trying to defend?

        They dumped dead bodies, for years into a structure that appears to have been built for the containment of sewage and turned it into a mass grave. There are children buried in there all of whom died in care of the church, and there was zero accountability. You’re really trying to defend the horror-fest that is Tuam.

        There is something wrong with that, for someone who claims to think that the life of every child is precious. A nice piece of hypocrisy on your part.

        1. newsjustin

          The appropriate burial of infant remains has not much to do with the abortion debate. I don’t know why you’d link the two. I could well ask how the remains of aborted foetuses are treated by the abortion industry…..but I won’t.

          You ask if I know what I’m “defending”. I wonder if people are sure what they are angry about. People are right to be angry about infant remains being disrespected and illegally buried. That is enough to be furious about…..which is why I mentioned the questions I did above (which aren’t defending anyone).

          1. Ultan

            We’re also angry at the high number of children who died while under church care. If a family had such high infant mortality rates, they’d be in court.

          2. newsjustin

            There were figures on here (BS) I think regarding this…and in the media. Infant mortality in institutions in the 1st half of the 20th century were very high….astonishingly so by today’s standards. Communicable diseases were rampant. You can’t compare mortality rates in families with institutional settings.

        2. Cian

          Hang on a second. Things were different 100 years ago. The way stillbirths and infant deaths were treated was different up to 40 years ago.

          Do you know about the Old Plot in Glasnevin cemetery? it was a mass grave that contained over 50,000 babies. They have since been moved to the Angels Memory Garden.

          From their website:
          “This Old Plot is the resting place for over fifty thousand infants who were buried there up to the 1970’s. Glasnevin is one of the few Cemeteries that allowed stillborn babies to be buried in concentrated ground. In early times stillborn babies were not allowed in blessed ground, as they were unbaptised. Many babies were buried in the ditches and hedges on the outside of other cemeteries around the country. ” [http://www.alittlelifetime.ie/angels-memory-garden-glasnevin-mainmenu-36]
          This was the reality for *anyone* that had a baby that died before it was baptised. We’re not talking about unmarried mothers or other non-people. But *everyone*. Even if you were married, middle-class, god-fearing and church going. if the baby wasn’t Christened, it wasn’t getting a proper burial.

          1. mildred st. meadowlark

            Yes, a mass grave, an acknowledged mass grave, in a cemetery.

            These are bodies that were dumped into chambers that were ostensibly meant to be used for sewage and then covered over to be disguised as part of the septic tank and sewage system, not in a cemetery, no note no acknowledgement that anyone was buried there.

            There’s a whole world of difference.

          2. Cian

            Mildred. As I quoted above: “Glasnevin is one of the few Cemeteries that allowed stillborn babies to be buried in concentrated ground.” And these 50,000 babies all went into a single hole without individual names/dates or any other acknowledgement who was there.

            This means that outside of Glasnevin (and a few others) these babies WEREN’T buried in concentrated ground. They were dumped in a hole, or a underground tank. But this was ALL un-baptised BABIES not just these Tuam babies.

            Read this: http://www.alittlelifetime.ie/angels-memory-garden-glasnevin-mainmenu-36 it explains what things were like

          3. mildred st. meadowlark

            Oh well that makes it acceptable.

            Hold the outrage folks. The fact there are mass graves everywhere makes it better.

            The Catholic Church have done indescribable damage to our society while piously claiming it was for our own good and that it was our Lords work.

            This is another crime they committed in ‘the name of God’, along with selling children, neglecting, beating them, not to mention the horrorshops of the Magdalene laundries.

            They have managed to create a situation, all by themselves, whereby the people of Ireland now assume the worst because the RCC have set a precedent for this kind of thing. And they have done next to nothing to atone for the multiple crimes they have committed. They barely acknowledge it.

            The onus is on them to provide evidence that this isn’t yet another underhanded and sneaky attempt to cover up yet another disgusting crime.

            My anger may seem OTT to you but my family suffered in huge ways at the hands of the church, and this disgusts me. It has angered me to tears.

          4. mildred st. meadowlark

            Thanks Kieran.

            Plenty like my family. Too many. And the nuns won’t even make a comment to acknowledge what’s come out in the Commission today. It’s so insulting and is such a typical response from the RCC. They don’t care.

            Makes me sick.

      2. Spaghetti Hoop

        Dumping human remains into a septic tank is fine is it? Not to mention non-registration of the deaths (obliged by law), not informing the Coroner in the instances of sudden death(s) and (allegedly) no involvement of next of kin, family wishes, public explanation.

        1. newsjustin

          None of that is fine. But utilising existing underground structures for burials isn’t a novel idea. I’d like to know the answers to my questions above.

        2. Cian

          They were recorded. That is how Catherine Corless discovered this, by looking through the death records.

      3. Ultan

        Give it time. Once the remains have been examined, I’m sure they will show how malnutrition and neglect were causes of a lot of the deaths. And allowing children to starve to death is, as far as I’m aware, a crime in this country.

        1. Daisy Chainsaw

          Newsjustin, have you found out how many Bon Secours nuns died from neglect and malnutrition during the same period?

      4. Starina

        is this really what you want to spend your precious time on earth doing, newsjustin? defending this?

        1. newsjustin

          Defending what?

          Have you not seen my list of questions above? I’d like to know exactly what happened to each and every person that passed through that place.

          Perhaps my comments would be more welcome if I just offered the standard “Fupping Church! Disgusting. Can’t believe…schools….prolife.”

          1. ReproBertie

            And yet you’re not willing to do one iota of research to actually find out the answers to your list of questions. Read any article on Catherine Corless and you’ll learn that the deaths were recorded and that the children were subject to neglect, not just by the nuns running the place, but by Irish society at large who had been brainwashed into believing that sex was sinful and sex outside marriage was even more so and to be pregnant outside of marriage was a crime that carried a sentence of imprisonment in a church run institution from where the child, taken from the mother, might be lucky enough to be sold if they didn’t die of neglect first.

          2. AnAccountant

            “Defending what?”

            You give yourself away a couple of paragraphs later;

            “Perhaps my comments would be more welcome if I just offered the standard “Fupping Church! Disgusting. Can’t believe…schools….prolife.””

            You’re defending your church’s name because you can’t bare to see an institution that used to rule us (and I’m guessing you enjoyed vicariously feeling like you were in charge) being spoken about as an evil, degenerate group by the people it used to boss around.

          3. newsjustin

            No. That comment was simply to point out the difference between actually taking an interest in the facts of the case versus having a rant at “the church”

          4. ReproBertie

            Like the difference between actually taking an interest in the facts and saying there are questions to be answered without attempting to find the answers?

          5. AnAccountant

            The facts of this case is that your church and its institutions buried lots and lots of babies in an unmarked mass grave. People are rightly angry with your fruity little cult for that. You just want to defend your fruity little club from that righteous anger.

  11. phil

    That would be the same organisation that claims to be pro-life to protect children ?

    Praise be, we saved that unborn baby with the FFA condition from abortion, it survived outside the womb for 15min, and we said some lovely prayers , then fupped it in the well out back…

    1. ReproBertie

      Every child deserves a mother and a father but if the father can not be found the off to the labour camps with the mother and child.

    2. Daisy Chainsaw

      They only give a fupp before it exits the vaginal canal. After that, it’s fair game. If it’s not healthy enough to be sold, it’s left to be malnourished, tortured, enslaved and raped.

  12. Fergus the magic postman

    If Terry Prone wasn’t alive to witness this, she’d be spinning in her grave.

    1. scottser

      now if ever anyone deserves to be left forgotten in a septic tank, it’s terry prone.

  13. Pluto

    This is what happens when you give power to an institution such as the Catholic Church. They used shame to get into the mindset of society. If an institution can control the way people feel in the bedroom, they control them wholly. Creating an electric feeling of shame in most people (as was the case in 1950s/60s Ireland) allowed the Church to get away with whatever the hell they wanted.

    The usual tribunala and claims of witch-hunting will be trotted out and we’ll stumble into exactly the same disaster again in 20 years time.

  14. Mary Jane

    Of course, this is just one institution where the bones have been found, but there are others which are not in the public domain that include adolescents who died in questionable circumstances such as Dangan.

    Many of these institutions were little better than concentration camps

    1. jusayinlike

      As this was happening, the RCC were trail blazing across Canada and Australia wiping out the Indians and aboriginals with their “missionaries” and “care homes”..

      This was a planned directive..

        1. jusayinlike

          The kings of genocide, and are fully behind eugenics, the think tank for the eugenics movement is called “The Club of Rome”…

          1. jusayinlike

            No I think it is indirectly run by the Vatican, its members are littered with Knights of Malta, who are answerable to the pope..

          2. newsjustin

            You think that the order of Malta, which very recently lost its two highest ranking members over a dispute over giving out condoms, is spearheading a eugenics programme? I think you need some time away from the Internet dude.

          3. jusayinlike

            As you can see, stopped in eugenics, you swallow the condom red herring justin, it’s meant for naive people like yourself..

  15. AnAccountant

    Can this evil cult be banished to the fringes of society where it belongs now, please?

  16. olllie

    These children didn’t all die at the same time, therefore the nuns were placing them in the underground chamber on an onging basis for years. This isn’t burial, this is dumping.

    And the issue of consecrated ground IS important for context; if the nuns dumped/ buried dead infants/children in unconsecrated ground it shows that they didn’t give a shit about them (again, nothing we didn’t know already)
    Finally, the surviving nuns are in their 70s and 80s, well able to be arrested and questioned as would I if dead bodies were found in my back garden.

    But, nothing will be done. Government will continue to protect religious and non religious child abusers, what would Enda’s people think if he actually stood up to the church?

    1. Cian

      Two things:
      1. if the babies were not baptised they were not allowed to put them in consecrated ground.
      2. this tank _may_ have been consecrated . All that consecrated means is that a priest blessed it.

      1. And Social Justice For All

        Yeah like what’s the big deal man? Hundreds of babies died just deal with it duh

  17. Niamh

    Mannix Flynn claimed that there were unmarked burials of adolescent boys at Letterfrack a good few years ago – the Christian Brother vehemently denied it, rubbished the claims, etc., no further investigation undertaken.

    There is surviving evidence in left-wing media from the 1940s that parents of children requisitioned to Artane suspected their sons had been beaten to death or died in otherwise suspicious circumstances, attempted to take this to the authorities / media, got nowhere.

    The other night on the fupping Pat Kenny show we had the Iona Institute’s well-trained PR woman getting worked up about ‘what is done with the bodies’ of aborted foetuses – a disgusting performance, given there were women in the audience identified as having gone through the trauma of fatal foetal abnormality. Nothing to say about what was done with these bodies at Tuam. We also had Ide Nic Mathuna thundering that Ireland has never legislated ‘a human right’ out of the constitution before, apparently forgetting the 2004 Citizenship Referendum, which the Church did not attempt to oppose or influence, as I recall – they were happy for African babies born here to be denied citizenship.

    Anyone still supporting these pathological fascists in 2017 is a misogynist at best, a brainwashed sociopath at worst.

    And yes, everyone knew what was going on. Everyone. They did not stand up, they did not have empathy, they were cowards. Those who oppose repealing the 8th amendment now also do not show empathy to women. I’ll finish on my absolute favourite moment from the Pat Kenny show: a male doctor in late middle age recalling how he was disgusted by a male schoolfriend’s declaration, at the advent of legal abortion in Britain, that ‘if my daughter got up the pole, I’d get rid of it’.

    ‘I just thought: that’s not fair’, sez our heroic venerable old male doctor. To the foetus, you understand. He had no problem with [a] schoolboys deigning to dictate what should be done ‘to’ women, [b] the idea that one’s daughter one belong to you, [c] the basic idea that the decision to abort is in the hands of the father.

    Nobody had a problem with that, apparently. This man’s anecdotal opinion on abortion was considered more authoritative than the opinion of, you know, women who’ve been pregnant and/or had abortions. You simply would not see that kind of extraordinary tactlessness and ignorance on television in the UK. But here, there is no accountability – we appear to have the emotional maturity of schoolboys, generally speaking, as a nation.

    1. Daisy Chainsaw

      Not about this latest church atrocity, but somewhat relevant nonetheless.

      http://avondhupress.ie/eighth-amendment-never-really-abortion/

      That might seem a strange thing to say in the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion, but the fact that 23,000 pregnant Irish women did not have access to a 20 week ultrasound scan last year shows we care in Ireland as little for the unborn as we do for the born.

    2. Otis Blue

      Just behind the buildings in Letterfrack, on the fringe of the National park where GMIT is located there’s a beautiful glade in which many young residents of the reform school were buried. Ages range from toddlers upwards and the crosses marking the graves are festooned with toys, sweets and various mementos, presumably left by family.

      It’s as heartbreaking and sobering a spot as could be found in this benighted isle.

  18. Daddy

    Ireland will be horrified for a week and then move on to the next thing nothing will be done about.

    We’re a nation of spineless gossipers. The brave few who follow up on our righteous calls for action end up being ignored and vilified for making us face our inner truths.

          1. jusayinlike

            I’ll b flying a Japanese flag on my car aerial, they knew how to deal with Jesuit perverts..

    1. Zena

      The priests and nuns involved in this and all the countless crimes against humanity, bestowed upon young girls, women and their babies, were and are, at the very least psychopaths and not one of the damn bastards did or will face a court or pay for their actions.

        1. Zena

          It’s all true. Don’t engage with me, you’re no better than them in your constant defence of them . You’re probably a priest yourself. Now piss off.

  19. Harry Molloy

    Blame, of course, lies at the feet of the institutions as managed by the Catholic church at the time.

    But I wouldn’t forget that all of society is complicit. Your parents, your grandparents, it was societies dirty secret and people knew what was happening or didn’t want to know.

    The church is to blame but they were enabled by our own society, let’s not remove the collective guilt of our own history just to conveniently drop it at the door of an organisation we don’t want anymore, thereby cleansing ourselves of the shame.

    How “fallen women” were treated in the past is our greatest shame.

      1. jusayinlike

        -1 Harry and Justin, I’d rather blame Jesuits dev and mcquaid for giving away the keys of the country to the RCC, education and everything..

  20. siblingofdaedalus

    Great post, pulls together so many things relevant to this, and Ireland generally.

  21. Junkface

    The Catholic Church of Ireland has no bottom to scrape, its continues deeper and sadistically further than anyone can ever imagine. Evil, evil, scum, with even more horrors to be revealed with time.

  22. EightersGonnaEight

    The Sisters of Bon Secours:

    http://www.bonsecours.ie/thesistersofbonsecours

    Having established a strong presence in the provision of acute healthcare in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries, the sisters of Bon Secours decided to set up the Bon Secours Health System as a limited company to organize and manage the running of the five Hospitals in the group. The Bon Secours Health System was established in 1993 to co-ordinate the management of five hospitals under the care of the Bon Secours sisters.

    From that page, a link: https://www.facebook.com/Irish-Catholic-Doctors-Association-141215772651025/

    and: http://www.bonsecours.ie/ourvision

    Our Mission

    The Mission of Bon Secours Health System is to provide Compassionate, Quality health care to those we serve, to be Good Help to Those in Need, caring for the sick, the dying and their families, within a Catholic ethos.

    Bon Secours means “good help” in French.

    Through our Mission, Bon Secours Health System will:
    Be a leader in Catholic Healthcare in Ireland.
    Empower staff to reach their full potential.
    Reach out compassionately to the community….

  23. martco

    Time to end schools admission policy control around baptism (catholic first). And financially punish those who try it.

    Most new parents I know cite the reason for baptism as the school entry problem.

    It’s like treating a garden for weeds, if u don’t go for the root you’ll never succeed in getting rid. Couple of generations on and the rcc will be nowt more than a weird cult with notions about itself.

    1. Sam

      If we had actually built a country that did what it professed to do in cherishing people equally and punishing the guilty then these criminal entities would not have any publicly funded schools to write an admission policy _for_ .

  24. :-Joe

    I just heard that ….EF “F” ING !!!! religulous moron from the US scraming at Moncrieff on newstalk that this is all anti-catholic western liberal-atheism gone mad lies and fake news etc. so I had to come on here to find some sanity…..

    Ye it’s daft, the whole thing is daft… the old school daft… (not the property website)…

    Here’s the weird thing though…

    As a priority, ze church and state is not specifically interested in anything to do with babies after baptism and basic laws being respected whether it’s abortion or infanticide.

    It’s focus has always been about control over the family unit but in particular the control of women through manipulating them in relation to their own reproductive system.

    Persecution of the female or the matriarch in society ultimately leads to the erosion of all all our basic human rights both male and female as a fully functioning society.

    Dead babies are just an unfortunate consequence along with all the other crazy regressive GIANT PILES OF ANIMAL EXCREMENT covered situations that they don’t care about either…

    Caravaggio was trying to tell us all along…. It’s all there in the paintings…. but we didn’t listen… because we weren’t capable of paying attention at the time…

    Dead babies all over the place… everywhere… it’s beyond our comprehension of insanity.

    Thanks be to god for mental illness……

    :-J

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