Tuam: The dreadful night the parish priest came for an unmarried pregnant girl

By Niall O'dowd
IrishCentral
March 12, 2017

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/tuam-the-dreadful-night-the-parish-priest-came-for-an-unmarried-pregnant-girl

Children, supervised by nuns, at an Irish Mother and Baby Home.

The parish priest came for Delia Mulryan one dark winter’s night in 1944 in the little west of Ireland parish. Delia was seven months pregnant, the baby was created out of wedlock, and the clergyman was hell bent on running the devil out of town.

As her son Peter Mulryan, then in the womb, now 73, relates it the parish priest was furious and spitting blood. ”The woman is bringing scandal to our community” he warned the petrified 17-year old’s father. “She must be removed.”

The power of the church was such that her father did not raise a protest. The priest wanted her gone now, immediately she would not be allowed to stain the good name of the parish.

Her departure couldn't even wait for daybreak.

It was a time before many automobiles in rural Ireland and dirt roads. The priest had an old fashioned bicycle with a crossbar on it. He grabbed the shaking young girl and left the house.

Seven month pregnant, Delia was seated side saddle on the crossbar and the priest took off in the dark of a winter's night cycling twenty miles to the mother and baby home then in Loughrea in Galway. One can only imagine the pain and suffering the heavily pregnant young woman went through on that bumpy bike ride.

Soon after, Peter and his mother were sent to Tuam, banished from their home village for ever. His mother never recovered and became institutionalized, later spending 35 years slaving in a Magdalene Laundry. She was one of an estimated 35,000 young mothers who had children out of wedlock who were shamed, despised and kept from “decent” society.

Years later, Peter found out his mother had a second child, a daughter Marian, thanks to research by Tuam historian Catherine Corless. She was marked as dead from convulsions at age 9 but no body or grave was ever found.

Peter told Ireland's “Late Late Show” in Friday night that he wants to know where his sister is before he dies. “Where is she now,” he asks, “Is she dead or was she like many, adopted in America.”

Delia and Peter Mulryan’s story is by no means unusual. Peter Mulryan was among many who experienced ill treatment and neglect by being fostered out after his first communion to local families who treated Tuam children very badly in many cases.They used them as farm laborers though they were not even in their teens.

"We were nobody. We received no respect at all," said Mulryan, who told Reuters that for much of his life he was so acutely aware of his low status that he kept his head bowed and never spoke of his origins.

Asked what he wanted now, towards the end of his own life, Mulryan said: "We had to bow to priests and bishops, but we never got respect back. So few have lifted the phone and apologized to me. It's the least they might do. Speak from the heart, from the altar, about what was done to the likes of us.”

Peter doubts there will be many takers.