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Al Jazeera
15-07-2025
- General
- Al Jazeera
How were babies' mass graves discovered in church-run home in Ireland?
Digging has begun to uncover the remains of some 800 infants and young children buried in mass graves in Tuam, western Ireland. These children have been unidentified for at least 65 years, and it was only a decade ago that a local historian discovered the existence of the mass graves. Here is what we know about who they may be, how they were found, and how they died. What's happening now? The excavation, which began on Monday, is expected to last two years. It will be on the site of St Mary's, a 'mother and baby home' run by the nuns of the Catholic order of Bon Secours Sisters, which no longer exists. The excavation will be by Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT), in collaboration with experts from the United Kingom, Canada, Colombia, Spain and the United States. Daniel MacSweeney, ODAIT director in Tuam, who is leading the excavation, told a recent news conference that the remains will be exhumed, analysed, identified where possible, and reburied. He added that the exhumation is 'incredibly complex' because some remains are mingled, archival records are lacking and it will be difficult to separate male from female remains if DNA cannot be recovered. What is a 'mother and baby home'? 'Mother and baby homes' were established across Ireland in the 20th century to house unmarried pregnant women who had no other source of support – family or otherwise – in a deeply conservative society. The vast majority of the 'homes' were operated by religious institutions, chiefly the Catholic Church. Shunned by society, the women sought help there, often suffering deep neglect and mistreatment, having their babies taken away for 'adoptions' they could not trace. St Mary's housed thousands of single mothers and their children between 1925 and 1961. It also housed hundreds of families of different configurations as well as unaccompanied children. How were the graves found? Local historian Catherine Corless discovered them nearly a decade ago. Corless grew up in Tuam and held vague memories of 'gaunt, desolate children being herded into the classroom at school, always a little later than the rest of us', she wrote in The Observer late last month. 'We were instructed by the nuns not to mix with those children, told that they carried disease. They did not continue into the higher classes and were soon forgotten,' Corless wrote. In 2012, Corless remembered the children when asked to contribute to a publication by the local historical society. She learned about the home after speaking to elderly residents of the city and began piecing information together, poring through maps and records. She found that there were no burial records for the many babies and children who died before the home closed down in 1961. While they had all been baptised, the Church denied knowledge of their death or burials. She also found that in 1970, two boys had found bones in an exposed part of the sewage tank and concluded there was enough evidence that the deceased babies and children were buried in a mass grave. Corless found records showing that as many as 796 babies and children died while they were at the home. Corless wrote that the Bon Secours sisters hired a PR company to deny the existence of a mass grave, claiming the bones were from the famine. However, Irish media eventually picked up her findings, prompting the Irish government to launch an investigation in 2015 into about 18 of the large mother and baby homes in Ireland. In 2016, a preliminary excavation revealed 'significant quantities of human remains' at Tuam. How did these babies die? State-issued death certificates list a range of causes of death, including tuberculosis, convulsions, anaemia, meningitis, measles, whooping cough and sometimes no reason. The first child to die was Patrick Derrane, who was five months old when he died from gastroenteritis in 1925. The last child to die was Mary Carty, also five months old when she died in 1960. The reason for her death is not specified. St Mary's was in a large 'workhouse' that was built in the mid-1800s, and it lacked central heating, heated water, and adequate sanitary facilities for nearly its entire existence. In the report by a commission established to investigate 'mother and baby homes' in Ireland, former inmates had mixed experiences, with some saying their time at St Mary's was fine, while others recounted a lack of food, rest, warmth, and even mothers denied access to their children. What has the church said? In 2014, then-Archbishop of Tuam Michael Neary said: 'I am horrified and saddened to hear of the large number of deceased children involved and this points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers. 'As the diocese did not have any involvement in the running of the home in Tuam, we do not have any material relating to it in our archives,' Neary said. He added that the records held by the Bon Secours Sisters were handed to Galway County Council and health authorities in 1961. In January of that year, the Bon Secours Sisters issued an apology signed by Sister Eileen O'Connor, which included: 'We did not live up to our Christianity when running the Home. 'We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the Home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way. For all that, we are deeply sorry.' Catholic Archbishop Eamon Martin acknowledged that the Catholic Church was part of a culture that stigmatised people. 'For that, and for the long-lasting hurt and emotional distress that has resulted, I unreservedly apologise to the survivors and to all those who are personally impacted,' he said in 2021. In 2021, the Irish government released a 3,000-page report based on the findings from their investigation which was launched in 2015. After this, all institutions formally apologised and pledged to excavate the site at Tuam. In January of that year, the Bon Secours Sisters issued an apology statement. 'We did not live up to our Christianity when running the Home,' the statement wrote. The statement, signed off by Sister Eileen O'Connor acknowledged that the sisters did not uphold the inherent dignity of the women and children who came to the Home. Catholic Archbishop Eamon Martin also apologised, acknowledging that the Catholic Church was part of a culture where people were stigmatised or judged. 'For that, and for the long-lasting hurt and emotional distress that has resulted, I unreservedly apologise to the survivors and to all those who are personally impacted by the realities it uncovers,' Marin said in a statement in 2021. What has the Irish government said? Also in January of 2021, Irish Prime Minister (or Taoiseach) Micheal Martin apologised in parliament on behalf of the state. In 2021, the Irish government released the 3,000-page commission report after six years of investigation, resulting in formal apologies and pledges to excavate the site at Tuam. In 2022, a law was passed allowing the remains to be exhumed and tested. What have family members of inmates said? 'These children were denied every human right in their lifetime as were their mothers,' Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at Tuam, told reporters this month. 'And they were denied dignity and respect in death.' Many children born in the homes survived but were taken to orphanages in other places or put up for adoption by the nuns. The mothers and families of these children did not know, and in many cases could not find out, what happened to their babies. Has this only happened in Ireland? Children in state or religious care in other parts of the world have also been abused in the past. In New Zealand, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care found in 2024 that approximately one in three individuals in state or religious care between 1950 and 2019 experienced abuse. During this period, about 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, which particularly targeted Indigenous Maori and Pacific Islanders. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada found that the residential school system had amounted to cultural genocide. The system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children who were forcefully taken from their families for 'reprogramming'. They ran from 1879 to 1997 under the Catholic, Anglican and United Churches.
Al Jazeera
14-07-2025
- Al Jazeera
Excavation of child mass grave at church-run home begins in Ireland
Excavation has begun in Ireland at an unmarked mass burial site to identify the remains of about 800 infants and toddlers who died at a church-run home for unmarried mothers. The digging of the site on Monday marked the beginning of a two-year investigation planned by Irish and foreign forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts in the western city of Tuam. The probe comes more than a decade after Catherine Corless, an amateur historian, first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there, forcing the government to form a commission to investigate the matter. The commission found that the remains of 802 children from newborns to three-year-olds were buried in Tuam from 1925 to 1961 as it discovered an 'appalling' mortality rate of about 15 percent among children born at all of the so-called Mother and Baby Homes, which operated across Ireland. Subsequent test excavations from 2016 and 2017 found significant quantities of baby remains in a disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex. Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation with experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States. It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible and reinterment of the remains found, Director Daniel MacSweeney said at a recent news conference in Tuam. 'Denied dignity and respect' 'These children were denied every human right in their lifetime as were their mothers,' Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters this month, the AFP news agency reported. 'And they were denied dignity and respect in death.' The Tuam home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours Order, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a housing estate. Significant quantities of human skeletal remains were found in chambers along with babies' shoes and nappy pins underneath a patch of grass near a playground during the test excavations. Corless found records that show as many as 796 babies and children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. State-issued death certificates compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the causes of death. 'It's been a fierce battle. When I started this, nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs,' Corless, 71, told AFP in May. 'I was just begging: Take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied.' A six-year inquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide. Catholic nuns ran the so-called mother and baby institution from 1925 to 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too, but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem.
CTV News
07-07-2025
- General
- CTV News
International team set to excavate Irish mother and baby mass burial site
Excavation Workers begin setting up at Tuam, Ireland, Monday July 7, 2025 ahead of the excavation at St Mary's home for unmarried mothers and their children which which was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, the Catholic nuns based in Tuam. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) TUAM, Ireland — International experts will join Irish counterparts to uncover an unmarked mass burial site for children at a former mother and baby home in Tuam in western Ireland, the director of the excavation team said on Monday. Staff from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States have joined the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) team in Tuam, its director Daniel MacSweeney said at a press conference in the town. The full-scale excavation of the site in Tuam -- 135 miles (220 kilometres) west of Dublin -- will start next week and is expected to last two years, said MacSweeney. The work at the burial site, which is being undertaken by the ODAIT, will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains of infants who died at the home between 1925 and 1961. Niamh McCullagh, ODAIT's Senior Forensic Consultant, said that the random nature in which remains were buried added to the difficulty. Significant quantities of baby remains were discovered in 20 individual chambers within an apparently makeshift crypt two metres below ground at the site during test excavations between 2016 and 2017, she said. MacSweeney told AFP that the complexity of the task 'is unique as we are dealing with so many sets of infant remains'. DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, said MacSweeney. A 2.4-metre-high hoarding has been installed around the perimeter, which is in the middle of a housing estate built during the 1970s. The site is subject to security monitoring on a 24-hour basis to ensure the forensic integrity of the site during the excavation. Over a decade-long wait The excavation comes over a decade since a historian discovered the unmarked mass burial site. In 2014, local historian Catherine Corless produced evidence that 796 children, from newborns to a nine-year-old, had died at the location. Her research pointed to the children's likely final resting place -- a disused septic tank discovered in 1975. The mother and baby home in Tuam was run by Catholic nuns between 1925 and 1961, and the site was left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972. It was Corless's discovery of the unmarked mass burial site that led to an Irish Commission of Investigation into the mother and baby home. Women who became pregnant out of wedlock were siloed in so-called mother and baby homes by Irish society, the state and the Catholic church, which has historically held an iron grip on Irish social attitudes. After giving birth at the homes, mothers were then separated from their newborn children, who were often given up for adoption. The state-backed enquiries sparked by the discoveries in Tuam found that 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over the space of 76 years. The commission's report concluded that 9,000 children had died in the homes across Ireland. Often, church and state worked in tandem to run the institutions, which still operated in Ireland as recently as 1998. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. 'These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers, and they were denied dignity and respect in death,' Anna Corrigan whose two siblings may have been buried at the site, told reporters. 'We are hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them as I think they have been crying for a long time to be heard,' she said.
News24
07-07-2025
- News24
International team begins excavation of mass burial site for children at former Irish mother and baby home
International experts will join Irish counterparts to uncover an unmarked mass burial site for children at a former mother and baby home in Tuam in western Ireland, the director of the excavation team said on Monday. Staff from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States have joined the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) team in Tuam, its director Daniel MacSweeney said at a press conference in the town. The full-scale excavation of the site in Tuam - 220 kilometres west of Dublin - will start next week and is expected to last two years, said MacSweeney. The work at the burial site, which is being undertaken by the ODAIT, will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains of infants who died at the home between 1925 and 1961. Niamh McCullagh, ODAIT's senior forensic consultant, said that the random nature in which remains were buried added to the difficulty. READ | Mom accused of killing, burying child, 2, appeared to love her 'son', colleagues say Significant quantities of baby remains were discovered in 20 individual chambers within an apparently makeshift crypt two metres below ground at the site during test excavations between 2016 and 2017, she said. MacSweeney told AFP that the complexity of the task "is unique as we are dealing with so many sets of infant remains". DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, said MacSweeney. A 2.4-metre-high hoarding has been installed around the perimeter, which is in the middle of a housing estate built during the 1970s. The site is subject to security monitoring on a 24-hour basis to ensure the forensic integrity of the site during the excavation. Over a decade-long wait The excavation comes over a decade since a historian discovered the unmarked mass burial site. In 2014, local historian Catherine Corless produced evidence that 796 children, from newborns to a nine-year-old, had died at the location. Her research pointed to the children's likely final resting place - a disused septic tank discovered in 1975. The mother and baby home in Tuam was run by Catholic nuns between 1925 and 1961, and the site was left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972. It was Corless's discovery of the unmarked mass burial site that led to an Irish Commission of Investigation into the mother and baby home. Women who became pregnant out of wedlock were siloed in so-called mother and baby homes by Irish society, the state and the Catholic church, which has historically held an iron grip on Irish social attitudes. After giving birth at the homes, mothers were then separated from their newborn children, who were often given up for adoption. The state-backed enquiries sparked by the discoveries in Tuam found that 56 000 unmarried women and 57 000 children passed through 18 such homes over the space of 76 years. The commission's report concluded that 9 000 children had died in the homes across Ireland. Often, church and state worked in tandem to run the institutions, which still operated in Ireland as recently as 1998. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. "These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers, and they were denied dignity and respect in death," Anna Corrigan whose two siblings may have been buried at the site, told reporters. "We are hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them as I think they have been crying for a long time to be heard," she said.
Fox News
18-06-2025
- General
- Fox News
Grim excavation begins at site believed to contain remains of around 800 babies
Irish officials have begun excavating the grounds of a former home for unwed mothers which authorities say contains the remains of around 800 babies and young children who died there. "It's a very, very difficult, harrowing story and situation," Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said Monday. "We have to wait to see what unfolds now as a result of the excavation." The former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in western Ireland — which closed in 1961 and was run by Catholic nuns — was one of many mother-and-baby homes during the 20th century in the European country. The homes housed unmarried pregnant women as well as tens of thousands of orphans, according to The Associated Press. Historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates in 2014 for nearly 800 children who died at the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home between the 1920s and 1961. However, she could only find a burial record for one child, the AP reported. A mass grave was later discovered by investigators in an underground sewage structure at the home. DNA analysis found the structure contained the remains of infants and young children between the ages of 35 weeks gestation and 3 years old, according to the AP. Family members and survivors will soon have the opportunity to view the works, according to Daniel MacSweeney, who is leading the exhumation of the infant remains. "This is a unique and incredibly complex excavation," MacSweeney said in a statement. Any remains recovered from the site will be analyzed and preserved by forensic experts. Identified remains will be returned to family members, while unidentified remains will be buried. The work is expected to take two years to complete, the AP reported. The sisters who ran the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home previously offered a "profound apology," acknowledging they failed to protect the dignity of the women and children that lived there, according to the AP. In 2021, Prime Minister Martin issued a former state apology after a report found that 9,000 children died in 18 mother-and-baby homes during the 20th century in Ireland. Daniel MacSweeney and Ireland's National Police and Security Service, An Garda Síochána, did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
