Women reunite 28 years after fleeing mother and baby home

By Olivia Kelleher
Irish Times
March 6, 2017

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/women-reunite-28-years-after-fleeing-mother-and-baby-home-1.3000372

Catherine Coffey O’Brien was seven months pregnant in 1989 when she fled the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home with her friend Angela (not her real name), who was six months pregnant.

Two women who ran away from a mother and baby home in Cork while heavily pregnant are to reunite later this week for the first time in close on three decades.

Catherine Coffey O’Brien was seven months pregnant in 1989 when she fled the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home with her friend Angela (not her real name), who was six months pregnant.

Catherine says the pair were out posting letters for the nuns when they made the decision to flee.

“We were posting cards to America for the nuns when we decided to thumb a lift. We managed to get a guy to stop at Patrick’s Bridge and we told him we were running away from the home. He was ‘bricking it’.