Derek Leinster, a campaigner for survivors of the Bethany Home, Rathgar, Dublin 6 (top in the 1950s)

Last week, the government agreed to launch a forensic excavation of the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home based on recommendations from Dr Geoffrey Shannon, National Child Protection Rapporteur,.

Further to this.

Dear Broadsheet,

It was wonderful to see Geoffrey Shannon’s report [on the Tuam exhumation] in the the Irish media but why did he and all other Irish academics exclude the Irish children and babies abused in other institutions as there were 14 Mother and Baby homes of varying sorts and they are all on the list of places the 2015 Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby homes is examining?

So why ignore the Protestant survivors yet again along with many of our Catholic brothers and sisters who are also excluded? It is 2018 and Geoffrey Shannon has let the Government off the hook yet again.

When it comes to the other Mother and Baby homes which are excluded by Minister Katherine Zappone and Shannon, there is none more excluded than the Bethany Home which has the oldest representation of all of the Mother and Baby homes groups by many years and have been looking for justice for over 20 years.

Mr. Shannon and Minister Zappone were nowhere to be seen during those long years of struggle and they ignore us now as they publish reports and jet off on junkets to America to discuss survivors with so called ‘experts’ while survivors groups are excluded and locked out.

Protestant survivors however, do not forget the great numbers of our Catholic crib mates who lived and died in the institutions. We were delighted that they got their apology and redress even as Protestant survivors and some Catholics were excluded and left out in the cold.

However, thousands of Catholics did get justice and redress in 2002 as they were in the Catholic Mother and Baby homes: many of them went onto older children’s homes and so called orphanages and although they had no paperwork or proof, their cases were accepted as genuine.

The Bethany home survivors stood outside clutching our irrefutable and undeniable proof but we were discriminated against in a blatant manner by the Government of the day.

The Bethany home group researched and found not just the death certificates of the hundreds of babies and children who were neglected to death in the notorious Bethany Home but, we even provided the plot numbers in Mount Jerome cemetery in Dublin.

Unlike our colleague Catherine Corless in Tuam, we did not have any outlines or shrines or historic myths to guide us. There were no flowers on the forgotten Protestant graves unlike the Catholic run homes

Our Protestant dead in their unmarked mass graves are people too. Protestant lives matter.

And yes, we now know why they died – from starvation – which the death certs listed as ‘Marasmus’.

Rickets and a host of other conditions and illnesses were rampant in the Protestant run homes and the houses where the babies were Nursed-Out (the State paid £-/15s per week) and the babies were left to rot.

I was one of those babies and my health is still suffering 70 years later. This abuse is not historical, survivors continue to suffer while Minister Zappone and her academic pals enjoy their junket in America at taxpayers’ expense while survivor groups are excluded as Protestants and some Catholic’s have always been.

This is not just hearsay. I have the paperwork and proof after more than 20 years research and Freedom of Information requests too numerous to count. Unlike the great and good currently talking about me in luxury hotels in America, I lived this life. I am a Survivor.

Academics and Mr Geoffrey Shannon and Minister Zappone and indeed all decent people, should be working to make Irish society all inclusive and adhering to the principle of ‘Nothing about us, without us’.

On Shannon’s point about death certificates and how there was a lot of wrongdoing and criminal behaviour by all of the people that reported and recorded the deaths in the Mother and Baby homes,

I am somewhat confused about his point on the babies and children that he says were never registered. In that case, there would not be 796 babies and children buried in Tuam?

Yes, there is a lot of very serious wrongdoing in all of the recorded history of these unwanted and forgotten Irish children and, that is a crime by the State and Church’s who now claim they can investigate themselves.

But one needs a lot more than just death certificates to find our fallen brothers and sisters who were dumped in unmarked graves: you need burial records from undertakers and cemeteries, books, personal testimonies, web research, hoctors and hospital records. Will the academics find them in Boston?

All this was the Law of the Land and should be in any civilised society, yet Shannon’s point that the State, by law, had to ensure the forgotten illegitimate babies had to have a decent Christian burial but instead choose to turn a blind eye as the nuns and religious dumped us in unmarked graves back then. but now we know the truth of how little the State and Churches thought of us.

The idea of a National Day of Remembrance or Memorial or Christian Burial or Reflection Day, has been advanced by many people including myself for many years. It is now time to turn it into a reality .

Our national Day of Christian Burial must include all Protestant homes as equals. So please Churches and State and Academics, no more talking about us, without us.

Listen to us and hear our voices instead of your own. We are living survivors, you are not.

We survivors must act now and get it right while the academics fiddle as we die without ever seeing justice..

Derek Leinster,

Bethany Home Survivors’ Group