Ireland's Lost Babies - BBC2 starting 17 Sept

I agree it was depressing. Not a complete hatchet job on the RC Church, I thought it was reasonably balanced – near the opening scene the woman said that when she went into labour her mother brought her to a “home” and left her at the gate saying ‘You can do your own dirty work now and don’t come back!’

We tend to (want to?) forget that it was our ancestors / kin who shoved their daughters into these homes and made them give up their babies. It was our ancestors who would not dream of employing a girl who had a child out of wedlock, or who shunned or at least frowned on a family whose daughter was in that position. Yes the churches shaped the environment but it was largely maintained by society, so parents were equally culpable. Forty to sixty thousand infants, a couple of thousand of them 'expatriated' to the US. A very small percentage, but still a horrific statistic given the lack of 'due diligence' on the new homes.

Back in the 1960’s I remember seeing strings of black-clad 12-15 year olds; same age as me, but unlike me -tearing around on a bike, getting up to mischief and chatting up girls - they were walking out in pairs from a local seminary, like crows. What sort of childhood did they have? How could those poor children ever grow up normal or have an understanding of what 'love and affection' means? All because it was a parental boast to have a priest in the family?

Trying to keep to a genealogy theme, it is sad that the records cannot be made more readily available to both adoptees and their parents. I wonder if there is a legal basis to fast-track a ‘discovery’ order that would rattle a few cages? Most of the reticence to divulge boils down to money. Fear of greedy lawyers, fear of potential claims, political fear leading to ‘keep the head down, it will go away, all of them will be dead in a few years!’ Sadly we have neither politicians nor clergy with the courage to do anything, the latter cohort being far more intelligent than the former and willing and able to obfuscate. And our national broadcaster would never dare rock the boat with something like this and will produce and broadcast s#ite, calling it ‘public service broadcasting’ when what it really is can be described as popcorn for the braindead couch potatoes.

Sam Kade wrote: »

How many of the children that were sent to the US had happy lives they were only focusing on the ones that didn't work out well? I know what happened here wasn't right but many of them were better off over there.

Agreed, but as the topic you mention was not 'genealogical' and I already was pushing at the borders of the Forum Charter, I did not go down that road.