"Significant" numbers of babies remains actually found

jobbridge4life · 08-03-2017 11:19PM

nhunter100 wrote: »

I asked you what abuse ordinary people engaged in inside of the homes/institutions. Did they physical and mentally abuse the women and children. Did they rape them, did they kill them? We do however know the clergy engaged in those activities in the homes /institutions. So answer my question please, what ordinary people carried out these activities?

No, you specifically said and I quote 'what abuse did the ordinary people engage in that went on in the homes/institutions?' that is not the same as 'what ordinary people carried out these activities'?

Providing the victims to the Church to abuse is engagement. Financially supporting the Church so that it can afford to commit the abuse, for instance by paying the abusers for the indentured labour of the inmates, is engagement. Giving the Church the power to commit the abuse, by supporting it directly and indirectly is abuse. Letting them get away with the abuse again and again by turning a blind eye or choosing to be actively ignorant, by not reporting, not pursuing them etc. was engaging in the abuse. I don't hesitate to consider that engaging in the abuse, I don't understand frankly how anyone could and the logic behind strikes me as being not too dissimilar from the excuses that many within the Church itself us to deflect their handling of the abuse 'I didn't personally participate in the abuse, I didn't know about the abuse, I didn't know any better, I couldn't have done anything to stop it'.

DaithiMa · 09-03-2017 12:36AM

Just an observation...Enda Kenny claims he is shocked and disgusted by this mother and baby scandal and he believes that the whole of Irish society of old has a lot to answer for. The chap is 65. He became a TD in 1975. He is complicit in this scandal.

maryishere · 09-03-2017 12:40AM

DaithiMa wrote: »

Just an observation...Enda Kenny claims he is shocked and disgusted by this mother and baby scandal.

He should not be shocked and disgusted. He should know about the RCC by now.
And the RCC of old is mostly to blame, as they controlled the society.

DaithiMa · 09-03-2017 12:42AM

He was minister for children between Feb 1986 and Jan 1987.

nelly17 · 09-03-2017 12:43AM

maryishere wrote: »

He does not deserve an audience if he does, for what his organisation did to this country.

I was raised a Catholic- but I don't consider myself a Catholic I simply don't believe in God and that would be hypotrical of me and as the Pope himself said recently its better to be an Athiest than a hypocritical Catholic. I also spent 8 Months in St Particks on the Navan rd as a baby.

But (and perhaps I'm wrong here) as a casual observer he seems to be a man trying to build bridges and attempting to right some of the wrongs of the past - certainly more so than any of the popes I can remember and I'm in my 40s.

Personally I would prefer to see him come here next year and get an audience and acknowledge the part that the church played Not just in Mother and baby homes but the Magdaline Launderies & Child clerical sexual abuse. This would suggest that the Church is interested in the betterment of society and that can only start by an acknowledgement of the wrongs it played a part in.

Without that I'll just take it as read that its more of the same and the church does not want to win the hearts and minds and to spread the word of Peace and Love - instead as so many suspected its just a bunch of largely Gay politically astute old men in robes wandering around the corridors of power in a rather opulant quarter of Rome carrying on with their power struggles amongst toxic attitude of permanent deception.

Zebra3 · 09-03-2017 01:15AM

DaithiMa wrote: »

Just an observation...Enda Kenny claims he is shocked and disgusted by this mother and baby scandal and he believes that the whole of Irish society of old has a lot to answer for. The chap is 65. He became a TD in 1975. He is complicit in this scandal.

Sure it's only a couple of weeks ago Kenny was expressing regret at the death of a leading figure within the RC Church's paedophile ring.

Yep, our highest political figure expressed regret at the passing of a human being who helped cover up widespread raping and abuse of young children.

JupiterKid · 09-03-2017 02:31AM

pedigree 6 wrote: »

In fairness it wasn't hard for the Catholic community to go along with what the priest preached from the pulpit.
The protestants were always looked at as outsiders of this country (especially rural Ireland ) even though families could be here for half a millennium.
Then throw in jealousy of farms or businesses and perceivation that somehow it doesn't belong to them and you can see how things could get petty and esculate.

The boycott ended when the local priest bought a packet of smokes in the local shop run by a protestant woman.

But Ireland was a horrific place.
Mixed marriages were forced by the Catholic church to bring up their children as Catholics. As apparently church of Ireland doesn't matter and you go to hell.

My mother was actually told that by the local parish priest one day.
She was playing with her sister outside the house on the road and the priest was walking by.
He stops and tells them that they should convert to Catholicism or otherwise they will go to hell.
This was in the 1950's.
She was 6 years old at the time and her sister 8. They ran into the house bawling.
Who says that to a child?
Tant
Oh this was absolutely some basket case of a country.

I remember a bitter nun, our religion teacher in school, telling me I shouldn't have a Protestant a best friend as all protestants were going to hell.

This was the early 1980s.

JupiterKid · 09-03-2017 02:35AM

This is what happened when the fusion of church and state was complete, as it was in the decades after Independence. Utterly repugnant to the Proclamation of Independence and human compassion and decency. The country was rotten to its core.

We must open these vile secrets if there is to be any long-term healing. And don't be fooled: there are plenty of people in this country who probably yearn for a return to those dark days.

Boggy Turf · 09-03-2017 03:00AM

What always bugs me is that women are always the most involved and supportive of the Roman church in Ireland and yet they have been treated like second class citizens by the Roman church for centuries. Why?

Boggy Turf · 09-03-2017 03:03AM

JupiterKid wrote: »

I remember a bitter nun, our religion teacher in school, telling me I shouldn't have a Protestnant as a best friend as all protestants were going to hell.

This was the early 1980s.

I know a mother who told her daughter that the girls not taking communion in her class were going to hell. This was 3 YEARS AGO.

JupiterKid · 09-03-2017 03:18AM

What are the odds that the atrocities and abuses that went on in Ireland 50/60/70 years ago are still going on in 3rd world countries with active Catholic missionaries today?

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 06:56AM

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

We can only judge it from our viewpoint, and while bearing in mind that we cannot see it from their. They were no better nor worse than us, rather acting within the context of their time and what was considered correct to do. So we can say that we, now, would not do the same thing, we cannot condemn others for doing it in a different time - we would likely have done the same had we been in their shoes.

You speak for yourself? I am nearly 80 and have always spoken out and acted against abuse and corruption. Well know for it!

Can and do condemn these ... women. Watching babies starve to death? Would you really have done that?

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:02AM

bubblypop wrote: »

Maybe you don't like to admit the part that society had in these homes. Maybe you prefer to think of them happening in deep dark unlightened Ireland.
The thing is, these attitudes did exist. Until very recently.
Yes the Catholic church committed these atrocities, but society in general, turned a blind eye. No one wanted to know what happened to these single women and there illegitimate children, so long as they were kept out of sight.
In much the same way as abortion is treated in this country now, so long as it doesn't happen here, and those women go elsewhere with their 'problems' we don't see it

I'm sorry if the truth about you, but you have called me a liar too many times on this thread.

Asking what folk think of the current attitudes to the travellers in this context?The discrimination there?NB the travellers did not hand their illegit or other babies over to the nuns. Cared for them within their communities, unlike middle class

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:07AM

infogiver wrote: »

Not excused. Explained I think.
By anyone's standards being a lone parent is a tough position to be in. My mother was a widow with 4 kids at 46 in 1980.
Very very tough.
And she had SW to fall back on. And the sympathy of everyone.
Imagine being an unmarried mother of say, 4 in say,1950.
No childcare, very little SW . There's no money in the country, no jobs, every one emigrating, no man wants to marry you because no man wants to rear other men's kids.
On a practical level, being a lone parent was almost impossible, if you didn't have the support of your immediate family.
What you have to accept is that these girls didn't have any support from their families.
If it's proven to be the case that the nuns didn't adequately care for them and the babies in proportion to the amount of money the state paid, (and I hope that this is what's being investigated) then the state had better get its wallet out, because the state should have been on top of it.
But can you answer me this? If they hadn't had the Convent to put them in, where else could they have gone?

These are not the issues here so please do not obfuscate. The issue here is the deliberate wilful and culpable systematic starvation and abuse of babies and children, and then disposing of them after death by dumping them in a septic tank.

Nt the issues re lone parents etc

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:10AM

infogiver wrote: »

I think reading this thread that it would be a very good idea if anyone who hasn't already, sit down with someone in their 80s and ask them about Ireland in the 40s and 50s. Ask them about Irish people. About farming families and business families and social politics.
The amount of posters applying 21st century sensibilities to an era that may as well be 600 years ago as 60 is ridiculous.

You really think that it was OK in the 50s to abuse and starve babies? And that ireland was so utterly backward and uncaring then? Tis thee needs to rethink. I have family from that era and am nearly 80 myself. We know truth.

What a copout you post!

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:12AM

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Indeed. It would seem that as many today are as quick to pass judgement on others, as the very same people of 60 years ago that they are criticising.
People like to indulge in a little cheap sense of superiority.

Excuse me? It is my generation.

So we also had and you also have no moral standards? Cheap? :eek:

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:18AM

infogiver wrote: »

This is what I'm talking about.
If you weren't alive in 1950 and you can't imagine what life was like then how do you know how you would have behaved?
Do you also hate and despise every single parent who dumped their daughter at the Convent door?
And grandparent who stood by and let it happen?
And aunts and uncles and neighbors and friends?
And the community at large who developed amnesia overnight and apparently completely forgot about a girl who had lived in their midst for all her life until that day?
Do you hate and despise the county councillors elected by the people who organised inspections by the health boards of the institutions but kept them open and kept funding them and thanked the nuns for all their hard work?
You'll have a lot of hating and despising to do if your going to vest your wrath on all the people responsible!

Ah here we have it! I am not hating or despising anyone. I was massively abused and forgave the perps..

If you cannot criticise and blame without hating and despising then you have a problem. Many here myself included can and do.

You print quite a list there...

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:36AM

Tramore Tilly wrote: »

You think if I lived in the 1950s I would be happy that women were being beaten up and dead babies dumped in sewers? You think the time line of my existence has a bearing on the atrocities carried out? Do you feel the same about WW2 Concentration Camps? Do you feel the same about US segregation? They lived in different times so their crimes are not for us to judge? What those nuns did in those homes is inexcusable regardless of the era. They were sick cruel animals.

As I have said earlier,when I came to Ireland nearly 20 years ago , as a respected monastic and ecclesiastical historian I was commisssiond to write a book on the Catholic Church in Ireland in the first decade of this century.I had fee access to many Mercy and other convents and was welcomed. .

Well,was welcomed until I saw beneath the self congratulatory veneer and luxury and wealth the remnant .. luxury manors with paid staff and landscape gardening workers... While in the nearby town old folk are struggling to keep warm

Lovely women; hospitable, charming. These Sisters of so called Mercy.

I had a long meeting with one 90 yr old Sister who was the archivist. She had a whole room devoted to the order locally. WHich had been heavily censured in the commissions into residential homes especially the one in that town. Malnourished, underweight starved...

When I mentioned this, the Sister turned and shouted, "THOSE CHILDREN WERE LOVED!"

HUGE anger.
I never went back there.

The money? They spent it not on the little ones of that you may be sure.

I helped at one Mercy House a while... Sister there said that if I took a certain old lady to mass every day in my car, "She will leave you her bungalow>"

Matter of fact assumption.

PS I scrapped the book !

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:39AM

jameorahiely wrote: »

Being overcrowded would have allowed measles etc to spread quicker through the population within the homes.

So? very few died of measles. And undernourished people of any age succumb to infections. Did the Srs die of measles too?

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:40AM

Esel wrote: »

When a girl or woman managed to escape from one of these hellholes but were unlucky enough to meet the Garda Síochána, they were generally transported back to the 'home'.

But that's all OK, because that was then and this is now.

and then they shaved the girls heads to make them conspicuous if they tried that again...

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:41AM

Noveight wrote: »

Not, it's not.

No, we're not.

Oh dear! From the list of thanks really touched a nerve there. AND YES WE ARE. If we in any way excuse this we are to blame.

Graces7 · 09-03-2017 07:45AM

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

The comparison is a good one, and of course slavery isnt OK from our view today.
But in the case of the USA of a century and a half ago, it was to many many people, and not to many many others. This synchronous clash of the two strongly held yet opposing views, coming from a very particular situation of various cultures and rapid development of an inhomogeneous nation was integral to a very serious war. It was a clash of two coexisting viewpoints, rather then the gradual societal change that this thread is considering. People supposedly of the same nation were judging each other - and that is valid where they are contemporaries trying to forge a united country. What is not, is those from one era, retrospectively judging those of a previous one that they were not or are not part of.

Inaccurate gobbledyegook excuses. There were no high ideals going on here. same as with the plight of the travellers

Just middle class scorn. The old push the dirt under the carpet tactic.

Samaris · 09-03-2017 08:01AM

On the note of "well, all of society is to blame", yes it is, but that's a bit of a cop-out answer, isn't it? Ah well sure everyone is to blame, so why focus on the Church. What does that say about society -today-, when the injustices of yesterday, pointed at specific orders and, if allowed, specific people within those orders, is ignored because the nebulous mass of "society" at the time had a seriously rotten streak. These people treated their children badly. Some of them cast out pregnant daughters who died of exposure, some of them cloistered them away for the rest of their lives. Some did neither, proving it was possible (if difficult) to stand against it. However, it was this specific order and perhaps nuns that still live today that took in these women, humiliated and bullied them and let their children die of illnesses that should not have killed them.

What exactly does it say about society today if we cover this up and let it fade because, sure, in the future others will judge us for not caring about iphones! Or because everyone who mentions it has got to know that there can be no punishment for "society". Besides, few to anyone has denied that society played a large part in allowing the opportunity (even inevitability) for abuse to arise.

The concentration camps business is actually a relevant comparison. As things stood in -German- society at the time, this was what was normal. Some didn't agree, some stood against it, it's true that concentration camps hadn't been part of their society forever. It was more blatant than in Ireland and both easier to see it was wrong and harder to challenge. But mostly it was accepted, with disapproval silent from most and a lurking fear that rocking the boat could see oneself or one's family punished. Therefore, any surviving Nazis should not be punished because sure, it was all of society involved. If the people in there lost their lives, were brutally mistreated, well, that's very sad, but it was all of society's fault so why blame the Nazis?

Because it is guaranteed I will have to defend this, no, I am not calling the Catholic Church Nazis. I am pointing out that in both cases, "society" colluded or tried not to notice with brave and notable exceptions with the courage to stand both against society's inertia and the order involved*, but in both cases, it was the people actually with the charge of these victims in their grasp that maltreated them, and who have the specific deaths on their hands, through their specific treatment of them.

*And even of them, many only stood up when it was their own blood relatives on the line, rather than because it was an evil at the heart of either society.

Mrs OBumble · 09-03-2017 08:21AM

JupiterKid wrote: »

What are the odds that the atrocities and abuses that went on in Ireland 50/60/70 years ago are still going on in 3rd world countries with active Catholic missionaries today?

You mean active Irish mossionaries , of whatever persuasion.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 09-03-2017 08:43AM

Graces7 wrote: »

Asking what folk think of the current attitudes to the travellers in this context?The discrimination there?NB the travellers did not hand their illegit or other babies over to the nuns. Cared for them within their communities, unlike middle class

You keep throwing in this 'middle class' phrase. Do you even know what it means?

Travellers are the bench mark now, are they? Married at 15 with little say in the arrangement. And a very high a child mortality rate.
You are mixing up two very different threads here and it leads to a point that seems to make no sense.

FA Hayek · 09-03-2017 08:48AM

TheWolfSheep wrote: »

I will point at the Communist Party of Ireland, who called for an enquiry into the death of a boy in Artane in 1935. I will say they are the only ones around here that have any sort of credibility.

The communists have death camps down to a tee. So no, they have no credibility.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1 · 09-03-2017 08:50AM

Graces7 wrote: »

Oh dear! From the list of thanks really touched a nerve there. AND YES WE ARE. If we in any way excuse this we are to blame.

Shout all you like. No, we are not. Even if someone makes excuses now, if the were not around back then or were in other places and unaware, then they are not to blame.

FA Hayek · 09-03-2017 09:03AM

Samaris wrote: »

On the note of "well, all of society is to blame", yes it is, but that's a bit of a cop-out answer, isn't it? .

No, its not. The Church did not go around kidnapping people. Family members freely put these women into these places. Society shunned pregnant women who were not married. This was the mindset in Europe for centuries.

The easy answer of course is to blame an 'other'. Blame the church or the state. Its easy of course. Yet, where did these pregnant women end up before the mother and baby homes? Were they cared for by the state? Nope, they ended up in workhouses with drunks, criminals, lunatics and the destitute. Like it or not, there was a need for them. Its unfortunate but too often we use the norms of society today in judge the past. The hard truth is that people have grandfathers, grand uncles, grand mothers who were more then happy to shove their sisters or daughters into these homes. That is the hard truth that people are not ready to face up to. The truth is too much for some, so they blame a static old organisation.

I would be with Diarmaid Ferritier on this, we should establish the facts before we do what Ireland does best, emotional sadomasochistic hyperventilating on how Ireland was like the 3rd Reich or Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Establish the facts first, then we can see the true picture.

laoch na mona · 09-03-2017 09:15AM

FA Hayek wrote: »

The communists have death camps down to a tee. So no, they have no credibility.

Where were the communist death camps in Ireland?

valoren · 09-03-2017 09:18AM

A modern analogy. They do say that Football is a religion.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is currently a well reported disaster.

Corruption in FIFA was always suspect. It has been proven to be the case.
We read weasel words from press releases promising reform, inquiries and sanctions.
It is generally believed that both the 2018 and 2022 World Cup's were won through a combination of bribery and said corruption, particularly Qatar, a country with no footballing heritage whatsoever.

We have seen and read reports about squalid camps where migrant workers work.
They are effectively imprisoned by unscrupulous, bullying contractors. Effectively, modern day slavery.
People are dying. The 'kafala' labour system allows it.
They are dying to allow the building of Football cathedrals to host a quadrennial vanity project for FIFA's multi-millionaires and it's billionaire sponsors, who still remain loyal despite corruption charges from the United States.

Now construction fatalities are a fact of life. No denying that. And staging sporting events are major undertakings. 60 people died preparing for the Sochi Winter Olympics. 10 for Brazil 2014. South Africa 2010? Two. London 2012? One.

Qatar 2022 - 1,200 fatalities. And there is still 5 years to go until it get's turned into Football's Disneyland.

Put's it in perspective when you look at mortality rates from the likes of Bessboro against the mortality rates nationally and internationally at the time. Babies were dying nationally. But that they were dying on a much greater scale in these homes which espoused care is the smoking gun.

We can torment ourselves, pontificate about all of this.
But it will go ahead no matter what.
Through the bribery, the corruption, the
indifference of those who follow soccer as a religion.
FIFA have been on record saying there are 'challenges' and 'ongoing processes' in face of the fatalities.

We know it's happening but ask yourself this; what can you really do about it?
Like the mothers and babies, the workers are out of sight.
They are nothing. And treated as such. They are essentially fodder for a greater goal.
The accrual of greater wealth, more influence, more power. Nothing more.
This is happening now in the internet age ,where we can freely disseminate such information.

It's happening now and it's going to happen. Qatar will get it's World Cup.
Exposes will happen in time, reports will increase about human rights abuses, more fatalities.
But billions of us will still watch tepid, boring matches in air conditioned football cathedrals.

"Significant" numbers of babies remains actually found

Comments