IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter
Concerns that death records were falsified in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home so children could “be brokered in clandestine adoption arrangements” at home and abroad were raised in an internal HSE report in 2012.
The unpublished report highlighted the “wholly epidemic” infant deaths rates at the Cork home and said: “The question whether indeed all of these children actually died while in Bessboro or whether they were brokered into clandestine adoption arrangements, both foreign and domestic, has dire implications for the Church and State and not least for the children and families themselves.”
The report, compiled as part of the HSE’s examination of the State’s role in the Magdalene Laundries as part of the McAleese inquiry, lifts the lid on the culture of cruelty at the home and found the State effectively washed its hands of the women and children.
It reveals the institution, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, as a place where:
* Women and babies were considered “little more than a commodity for trade amongst religious orders”;
* “Institutionalisation and human trafficking” took place among various religious orders and State-funded institutions;
* Women were provided with “little more than the basic care and provision afforded to that of any individual convicted of crimes against the State”;
* Infant death rates were “wholly epidemic” and a “cause for serious consternation”;
* The order had a “preoccupation with materialism, wealth and social status”;
* A “cold and lonely environment” prevailed, “characterised by harrowing social, emotional and physical isolation and institutionalisation”.
The study, previously released under freedom of information, revealed that from 1934 until 1953 (the only years for which deaths were recorded at Bessborough) 478 children died — a death rate of almost one infant a fortnight for nearly two decades.
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