We All Tolerated It As the Horrors of Tuam Mother-and-baby Home Went on Unchecked

By Oliver Callan
Irish Sun
March 9, 2017

https://www.thesun.ie/news/686069/we-all-tolerated-it-as-the-horrors-of-tuam-mother-and-baby-home-went-on-unchecked/

THE Tuam babies scandal has not only exposed horrors committed by the Catholic Church in mother and baby homes, but shows that everyone in society shared some responsibility for them.

The atrocities were carried out by a Church backed by the political and professional classes, with the acquiescence of those below them.

Tuam scandal has exposed horrors committed by Catholic Church

This week, a Taoiseach who has been a TD since 1975 expressed “shock” at learning about a scandal and cover-up that continued while he was still in the Dail.

The crime of being a woman who had sex outside marriage was enough to justify a lifetime of pain inflicted on them by an Ireland that is too often too fondly remembered.

That it happened at all is a shame on all society. That it was carried out mostly by nuns, women themselves, is almost impossible to comprehend. That we aren’t shouting from the rooftops demanding justice now is troubling.

For decades Irish children born out of wedlock were subject to imprisonment, neglect, starvation, even murder. If they didn’t live to be sold into adoption for the profit of religious orders, their tiny bodies were dumped into pits.

The fact that this happened decades ago should not diminish the gravity of the acts, or how we approach the search for answers today.

Kevin Higgins, a solicitor for a seriously ill elderly man seeking records related to his infant sister who died in the Tuam home in 1955, told the High Court this week that the Bon Secours order is “lying through (its) teeth” about what it knows.

Cases like this one detail the glacial rate of accessing records, with snail mail and vaguely written letters that end up frustrating the process hurting survivors and relatives of victims more.

It is hard to fathom that the order responsible is still being treated so softly by the State.

Enda Kenny was shocked by the discoveries

Why aren’t the Bon Secours and other orders simply raided by the Gardai and all their records seized? Why aren’t criminal investigators frantically surveying the grounds of all former homes for human remains?

Instead we have quivering-lip speeches from Enda Kenny. Justice for those wronged by the State and children rendered homeless by greed during his term in office has been in short supply.

The outcome of the various inquiries into child abuse and its cover-up by Church and State is a worrying precursor to the search for justice for the mothers and babies involved in this latest scandal.

Workers at the site of the mass grave in Tuam

In 2002, Michael Woods, on his last day as minister, signed an indemnity for the Church that capped the redress it would pay to victims of abuse at IR?100million.

Taxpayers would foot the rest of the bill which exceeded a billion euro.

The outrageous agreement was amended in 2009 when the Church was ordered to surrender more cash and property.

Just 16 months ago, it emerged the Church had still not handed over ˆ31million worth of property pledged as part of the 2009 redress deal.

While the horrible truth had emerged, the Church still had powerful friends willing to spare them punishment.

Ireland was akin to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia for much of the last century. We did not have concentration camps and gulags, we had Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby homes and reform schools.

Everyone — good and decent people, our own forebears and those still living — helped create or tolerate a system where horrors continued unchecked.

A cowed people scuttled to and fro outside Tuam, Sean Ross Abbey and other such homes, never asking what went on behind those walls.

Ordinary citizens brought garments to the Magdalene Sisters, paying for and receiving their laundry through a wall hatch, never questioning what went on inside.

But there was an unspoken realisation that something grave was happening. It’s chillingly reminiscent of how ordinary Germans described normal life on the fringes of the Holocaust camps.

A plaque was erected in Tuam, Co Galway in memory of the children

The powerful stories told to Joe Duffy by courageous but hurting women, some in their 70s now, on RTE’s Liveline this week should be compulsory listening for all citizens of this State.

The State inspected the homes and reported that the children were emaciated, despite the abundance of food on site.

Yet no one in the civil service system, nor the TDs and ministers working alongside them, ever did a single thing.

There was no holding the men who fathered children out of wedlock to account either and none themselves saw fit to help the condemned women.

In 2016 we reflected on the glory of past heroes from the Rising and asked what sort of society we are now. A year on, we are brought back into the murky light of what Ireland was really like in an age without a foreign enemy to blame.

Ordinary people did nothing then, and are not doing enough now to confront these wrongs. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

As we open our eyes to the raw pain of those homes, we should also ask what’s happening in 2017 that our blind eyes won’t be open to until decades from now.

Kenny’s off for a St. Pat on the head

IRELAND might be awash with scandals involving alleged Garda malpractice, alleged HSE incompetence and historic Church abuse — but no matter is too big to prevent the annual exodus of politicians for St Patrick’s Day festivities, which starts today.

The rest of us have to wait until March 17 to get a break but, from this evening, TDs are off for two weeks.

Most of them have to occupy themselves with the fortnight break at home, but the Cabinet will be travelling in style for up to a week for the annual bank holiday.

The traditional shamrock exchange

The Dail won’t return until the end of March when it sits for two weeks before taking another fortnight off for Easter. Nice work if you can get it.

And by work, we mean sweet shamrock all. Every year, the Government says these trips are invaluable and net millions for the economy, without ever showing proof.

What’s “good for the economy” usually means it benefits the sort of fatcats who have access to these bums with sods on their lapels.

These suits like to move capital around the world and wash it through Ireland to save bigly on taxes in exchange for employing Irish people who pay full tax.

But rest assured because that tax is put to good use, like, eh, funding ministers having dinner with more fatcats who don’t like paying their share.

This year, the Cabinet is whipping up support in such typical bastions of Irish investment as, ahem, Indonesia, South Korea, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

Irish eyes will be on ‘Caretaker’ Taoiseach Enda Kenny, above with Barack Obama, who’s handing shamrock to Donald Trump on the day the new travel ban takes effect against six countries.

Enda is expected to give Trump a firm talking to about human rights, before climbing down off his knee and doing whatever he says . . . with a shamrock on top.