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The Independent
a day ago
- General
- The Independent
The secrets inside the ‘chamber of horrors' being exhumed at Ireland's mass baby grave
A mass grave containing the remains of nearly 800 infants and young children, some found within a defunct septic tank, has been uncovered at the site of a former mother and baby home in Ireland. The horrific discovery, on grounds once managed by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns, has forced Ireland and its deeply intertwined Catholic Church to confront a dark chapter of their history. The site, where only a single stone wall now stands, symbolises a cruel system that shunned unmarried mothers and forcibly separated them from their children. While the burial site was accidentally stumbled upon by two boys half a century ago, the full extent of the tragedy only emerged after a local historian meticulously investigated the home's past. Catherine Corless revealed that the site was atop a septic tank and that 796 deceased infants were unaccounted for. Her findings caused a scandal when the international news media wrote about her work in 2014. When test excavations later confirmed an untold number of tiny skeletons were in the sewage pit, then-Prime Minister Enda Kenny called it a 'chamber of horrors.' Pope Francis later apologised for the church's 'crimes' that included forced separations of unwed mothers and children. The nuns apologised for not living up to their Christianity. The homes were not unique to Ireland and followed a Victorian-era practice of institutionalizing the poor, troubled and neglected children, and unmarried mothers. The Tuam home was cold, crowded and deadly. Mothers worked there for up to a year before being cast out — almost always without their children. Corless' report led to a government investigation that found 9,000 children, or 15%, died in mother and baby homes in the 20th century. The Tuam home — open from 1925 to 1961 — had the highest death rate. Corless said she was driven to expose the story 'the more I realised how those poor, unfortunate, vulnerable kids, through no fault of their own, had to go through this life.' Corless' work brought together survivors of the homes and children who discovered their own mothers had given birth to long-lost relatives who died there. Annette McKay said there's still a level of denial about the abuse, rape and incest that led some women to the homes while fathers were not held accountable. 'They say things like the women were incarcerated and enslaved for being pregnant,' McKay said. 'Well, how did they get pregnant? Was it like an immaculate conception?' Her mother ended up in the home after being raped as a teenager by the caretaker of the industrial school where she had been sentenced for 'delinquency' after her mother died and father, a British soldier, abdicated responsibility. Her mother, Margaret 'Maggie' O'Connor, only revealed her secret when she was in her 70s, sobbing hysterically when the story finally came out. Six months after giving birth in Tuam in 1942, O'Connor was hanging laundry at another home where she had been transferred when a nun told her, 'the child of your sin is dead.' She never spoke of it again. Some 20 years later, a Sunday newspaper headline about a 'shock discovery' in Tuam caught McKay's attention. Among the names was her long-lost sister, Mary Margaret O'Connor, who died in 1943. Barbara Buckley was born in the Tuam home in 1957 and was 19 months old when she was adopted by a family in Cork. She was an adult when a cousin told her she'd been adopted and was later able to find her birth mother through an agency. Her mother came to visit from London for two days in 2000 and happened to be there on her 43rd birthday, though she didn't realise it. 'I found it very hard to understand, how did she not know it was my birthday?' Buckley said. 'Delving deep into the thoughts of the mothers, you know, they put it so far back. They weren't dealing with it anymore.' She said her mother had worked in the laundry and was sent away after a year, despite asking to stay longer. Her lasting memory of the place was only being able to see the sky above the high walls. At the end of their visit, her mother told her it had been lovely to meet her and her family, but said she'd never see her again. Buckley was devastated at the rejection and asked why. 'She said, 'I don't want anyone finding out about this,'' Buckley said. 'Going back to 1957 — and it was still a dark secret.' Pete Cochran considers himself one of the lucky ones. He was 16 months old when he got out of the home and was adopted by a family in the U.S., where he avoided the stigma that would have dogged him as a so-called illegitimate child in his homeland. During his visit to Tuam before the dig began, a man from town told him at a bar: 'I respect you now, but growing up, I used to spit on you because that's what I was taught.' Cochran hopes the dig turns up few remains. 'I hope they don't find 796 bodies,' he said. 'That all these children were adopted and had a good life like I did.' McKay has had the same hope for her sister. But even if they found a thimble full of her remains, she'd like to reunite her with her mom, who died in 2016. 'The headstone hasn't got my mother's name on it because I fought everybody to say I refuse to put my mom's name on until she can have her child with her,' McKay said.
Washington Post
a day ago
- General
- Washington Post
‘Chamber of horrors' being exhumed at Ireland mass baby grave
TUAM, Ireland — Only one stone wall remains of the old mother and baby home in this town, but it has cast a shadow over all of Ireland. A mass grave that could hold up to nearly 800 infants and young children — some of it in a defunct septic tank — is being excavated on the grounds of the former home run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.
Associated Press
a day ago
- Associated Press
‘Just a jumble of bones.' How a baby grave discovery has grown to haunt Ireland
TUAM, Ireland (AP) — This story begins with a forbidden fruit. It was the 1970s in this small town in the west of Ireland when an orchard owner chased off two boys stealing his apples. The youngsters avoided being caught by clambering over the stone wall of the derelict Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home. When they landed, they discovered a dark secret that has grown to haunt Ireland. One of the boys, Franny Hopkins, remembers the hollow sound as his feet hit the ground. He and Barry Sweeney pushed back some briars to reveal a concrete slab they pried open. 'There was just a jumble of bones,' Hopkins said. 'We didn't know if we'd found a treasure or a nightmare.' Hopkins didn't realize they'd found a mass unmarked baby grave in a former septic tank — in a town whose name is derived from the Irish word meaning burial place. It took four decades and a persistent local historian to unearth a more troubling truth that led this month to the start of an excavation that could exhume the remains of almost 800 infants and young children. The Tuam grave has compelled a broader reckoning that extends to the highest levels of government in Dublin and the Vatican. Ireland and the Catholic Church, once central to its identity, are grappling with the legacy of ostracizing unmarried women who they believed committed a mortal sin and separating them from children left at the mercy of a cruel unlikely investigator Word of Hopkins' discovery may never have traveled beyond what is left of the home's walls if not for the work of Catherine Corless, a homemaker with an interest in history. Corless, who grew up in town and vividly remembers children from the home being shunned at school, set out to write an article about the site for the local historical society. But she soon found herself chasing ghosts of lost children. 'I thought I was doing a nice story about orphans and all that, and the more I dug, the worse it was getting,' she said. Mother and baby homes were not unique to Ireland, but the church's influence on social values magnified the stigma on women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. The homes were opened in the 1920s after Ireland won its independence from Britain. Most were run by Catholic nuns. In Tuam's case, the mother and baby home opened in a former workhouse built in the 1840s for poor Irish where many famine victims died. It had been taken over by British troops during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23. Six members of an Irish Republican Army faction that opposed the treaty ending the war were executed there in 1923. Two years later, the imposing three-story gray buildings on the outskirts of town reopened as a home for expectant and young mothers and orphans. It was run for County Galway by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic order of nuns. The buildings were primitive, poorly heated with running water only in the kitchen and maternity ward. Large dormitories housed upward of 200 children and 100 mothers at a time. Corless found a dearth of information in her local library but was horrified to learn that women banished by their families were essentially incarcerated there. They worked for up to a year before being cast out — most of them forever separated from their children. So deep was the shame of being pregnant outside marriage that women were often brought there surreptitiously. Peter Mulryan, who grew up in the home, learned decades later that his mother was six months pregnant when she was taken by bicycle from her home under the cover of darkness. The local priest arranged it after telling her father she was 'causing a scandal in the parish.' Mothers and their children carried that stigma most of their lives. But there was no accountability for the men who got them pregnant, whether by romantic encounter, rape or incest. More shocking, though, was the high number of deaths Corless found. When she searched the local cemetery for a plot for the home's babies, she found brothersAround the time Corless was unearthing the sad history, Anna Corrigan was in Dublin discovering a secret of her own. Corrigan, raised as an only child, vaguely remembered a time as a girl when her uncle was angry at her mother and blurted out that she had given birth to two sons. To this day, she's unsure if it's a memory or dream. While researching her late father's traumatic childhood confined in an industrial school for abandoned, orphaned or troubled children, she asked a woman helping her for any records about her deceased mom. Corrigan was devastated when she got the news: before she was born, her mother had two boys in the Tuam home. 'I cried for brothers I didn't know, because now I had siblings, but I never knew them,' she said. Her mother never spoke a word about it. A 1947 inspection record provided insights to a crowded and deadly environment. Twelve of 31 infants in a nursery were emaciated. Other children were described as 'delicate,' 'wasted,' or with 'wizened limbs.' Corrigan's brother, John Dolan, weighed almost 9 pounds when he was born but was described as 'a miserable, emaciated child with voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions, probably mental defective.' He died two months later in a measles outbreak. Despite a high death rate, the report said infants were well cared for and diets were excellent. Corrigan's brother, William, was born in May 1950 and listed as dying about eight months later. There was no death certificate, though, and his date of birth was altered on the ledger, which was sometimes done to mask adoptions, Corrigan said. Ireland was very poor at the time and infant mortality rates were high. Some 9,000 babies — or 15% — died in 18 mother and baby homes that were open as late as 1998, a government commission found. In the 1930s and 1940s, more than 40% of children died some years in the homes before their first birthday. Tuam recorded the highest death percentage before closing in 1961. Nearly a third of the children died there. In a hunt for graves, the cemetery caretaker led Corless across the street to the neighborhood and playground where the home once stood. A well-tended garden with flowers, a grotto and Virgin Mary statue was walled off in the corner. It was created by a couple living next door to memorialize the place Hopkins found the bones. Some were thought to be famine remains. But that was before Corless discovered the garden sat atop the septic tank installed after the famine. She wondered if the nuns had used the tank as a convenient burial place after it went out of service in 1937, hidden behind the home's 10-foot-high walls. 'It saved them admitting that so, so many babies were dying,' she said. 'Nobody knew what they were doing.' A sensational storyWhen she published her article in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society in 2012, she braced for outrage. Instead, she heard almost nothing. That changed, though, after Corrigan, who had been busy pursuing records and contacting officials from the prime minister to the police, found Corless. Corrigan connected her with journalist Alison O'Reilly and the international media took notice after her May 25, 2014, article on the Sunday front page of the Irish Mail with the headline: 'A Mass Grave of 800 Babies.' The article caused a firestorm, followed by some blowback. Some news outlets, including The Associated Press, highlighted sensational reporting and questioned whether a septic tank could have been used as a grave. The Bon Secours sisters hired public relations consultant Terry Prone, who tried to steer journalists away. 'If you come here you'll find no mass grave,' she said in an email to a French TV company. 'No evidence that children were ever so buried and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying, 'Yeah a few bones were found — but this was an area where famine victims were buried. So?'' Despite the doubters, there was widespread outrage. Corless was inundated by people looking for relatives on the list of 796 deaths she compiled. Those reared with the stain of being 'illegitimate' found their voice. Mulryan, who lived in the home until he was 4½, spoke about being abused as a foster child working on a farm, shoeless for much of the year, barely schooled, underfed and starved for kindness. 'We were afraid to open our mouths, you know, we were told to mind our own business,' Mulryan said. 'It's a disgrace. This church and the state had so much power, they could do what they liked and there was nobody to question them.' Then-Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the children were treated as an 'inferior subspecies' as he announced an investigation into mother and baby homes. When a test excavation confirmed in 2017 that skeletons of babies and toddlers were in the old septic tank, Kenny dubbed it a 'chamber of horrors.' Pope Francis acknowledged the scandal during his 2018 visit to Ireland when he apologized for church 'crimes' that included child abuse and forcing unmarried mothers to give up their children. It took five years before the government probe primarily blamed the children's fathers and women's families in its expansive 2021 report. The state and churches played a supporting role in the harsh treatment, but it noted the institutions, despite their failings, provided a refuge when families would not. Some survivors saw the report as a damning vindication while others branded it a whitewash. Prime Minister Micheál Martin apologized, saying mothers and children paid a terrible price for the nation's 'perverse religious morality.' 'The shame was not theirs — it was ours,' Martin said. The Bon Secours sisters offered a profound apology and acknowledged children were disrespectfully buried. 'We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children,' Sister Eileen O'Connor said. 'We failed to offer them the compassion that they so badly needed.' The digWhen a crew including forensic scientists and archaeologists began digging at the site two weeks ago, Corless was 'on a different planet,' amazed the work was underway after so many years. It is expected to take two years to collect bones, many of which are commingled, sort them and use DNA to try to identify them with relatives like Corrigan. Dig director Daniel MacSweeney, who previously worked for the International Committee of Red Cross to identify missing persons in conflict zones in Afghanistan and Lebanon, said it is a uniquely difficult undertaking. 'We cannot underestimate the complexity of the task before us, the challenging nature of the site as you will see, the age of the remains, the location of the burials, the dearth of information about these children and their lives,' MacSweeney said. Nearly 100 people, some from the U.S., Britain, Australia, and Canada, have either provided DNA or contacted them about doing so. Some people in town believe the remains should be left undisturbed. Patrick McDonagh, who grew up in the neighborhood, said a priest had blessed the ground after Hopkins' discovery and Masses were held there regularly. 'It should be left as it is,' McDonagh said. 'It was always a graveyard.' A week before ground was broken, a bus delivered a group of the home's aging survivors and relatives of mothers who toiled there to the neighborhood of rowhouses that ring the playground and memorial garden. A passageway between two homes led them through a gate in metal fencing erected to hide the site that has taken on an industrial look. Beyond grass where children once played — and beneath which children may be buried — were storage containers, a dumpster and an excavator poised for digging. It would be their last chance to see it before it's torn up and — maybe — the bones of their kin recovered so they can be properly buried. Corrigan, who likes to say that justice delayed Irish-style is 'delay, deny 'til we all go home and die,' hopes each child is found. 'They were denied dignity in life, and they were denied dignity and respect in death,' she said. 'So we're hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them because I think they've been crying for an awful long time to be heard.' ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
CTV News
22-07-2025
- CTV News
Woman accused of impaired driving in L'Ange-Gardien, Que. had infants in the car
Police in western Quebec say a 34-year-old woman who was pulled over on suspicion of impaired driving had two infants in the car. MRC des Collines de l'Outaouais police said in a news release that officers saw a someone driving erratically in the L'Ange-Gardien area Sunday evening. When the driver was pulled over, police said she registered double the legal alcohol limit on a breath test. Her partner, who does not have a driver's licence, was in the car and was even more intoxicated, according to police. Two babies, aged five months and 17 months, were also in the car. The woman received an automatic roadside licence suspension of 90 days, police said, and her vehicle has been impounded for 30 days. She is due in court to face charges. The father and the two children were taken to a friend's home to rest.
Daily Mail
17-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Melbourne daycare worker accused of shocking abuse against children had been sacked from previous job - as calls grow for national childcare register
It's been revealed that a childcare worker accused of abusing infants was sacked from one facility, as a former royal commissioner castigated authorities for dragging their feet on record-keeping. Joshua Dale Brown, 26, has been charged with more than 70 sex offences against eight alleged victims aged under two at a childcare centre in Melbourne. Authorities have previously said there were no known complaints against him, however, childcare giant Nido Early Learning has confirmed Brown was sacked while on probation after completing 18 shifts at a centre in Werribee, in Melbourne's west. The incident happened before he started working at G8-owned Creative Garden centre, at Point Cook in Melbourne's southwest, where he is accused of abusing children between April 2022 and January 2023. A Nido Early Learning spokesperson said Brown was terminated over 'unsatisfactory attention' given to an internal incident report related to one child's behaviour towards another child. 'The action did not relate to any behaviour by the individual towards a child,' they said. 'We have zero tolerance for the non-compliance to our internal policies, no matter how trivial they sound to external parties.' Brown was also subject to two misconduct investigations while he was working at G8, both of which found the non-sexual claims involving children were substantiated. He was suspended and then resigned after the second investigation. Both incidents came after the alleged abuse for which he has been charged. The parents of about 2000 children who crossed paths with Brown have been told to get them tested for infectious diseases. His work history was updated this week to include four new centres. Investigators have blamed delays on gathering information on his employment on a lack of centralised records, revealing they had to get search warrants to obtain handwritten records, shift rosters and other critical data. Federal and state jurisdictions have promised to fast-track a national register for childcare workers, after it was discovered Brown had worked at 24 facilities since 2017. New laws to strip dodgy childcare centres of federal funding and other changes will be introduced by the government when parliament resumes, however the Victorian coalition is concerned that may not be enough to prevent abuse. 'The government must ensure its proposed legislation improves safety and removes the risk of this ever happening again,' early learning spokesperson Zoe McKenzie said. Poor record keeping and information sharing in sectors dealing with children were key issues highlighted in the 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The commission's recommendations included improving teacher and worker registrations, improving the quality of institutional record keeping, the ability to exchange information between facilities and for states and territories to keep better track of workers employed in their jurisdictions. While all nine governments in Australia accepted the recommendations, it's been difficult to get them to act, former royal commissioner Robert Fitzgerald said. 'Ten years on from our recommendations around information sharing and record keeping, the job has not yet been done and it has not been done because the nine governments of Australia have not committed the willpower to get it done in a timely manner,' Mr Fitzgerald told AAP. He accused some states and territories of being particularly slow in implementing significant recommendations. 'These are all manageable. These are all achievable and my disappointment is that progress has been made, but the job should have been done,' Mr Fitzgerald said. The former commissioner said every gap left in safeguarding the sector meant children were put at risk. Adequate record keeping and information sharing can inform subsequent employers of a history of concern, not necessarily convictions, and can provide authorities with an insight into any patterns of abuse. But the former commissioner warned that workers' rights can't be abandoned where complaints or criminal action have not been substantiated. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
