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Child Item

Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

Spring Onion

http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Mass-grave-of-up-to-800-dead-babies-exposed-in-County-Galway-.html

Why isn't story getting more attention? Nothing surprises me about the cruelty of religious orders anymore but this article suggests babies were neglected to die on purpose.

And most parents in Ireland still think it should force their children to join this organisation...

EDIT (robindch): the petition is here:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Frances_Fitzgerald_Irish_Minister_for_Justice_and_Equality_A_full_Gardai_investigation_into_the_mass_grave_in_Tuam_Co_Ga/

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Cabaal

jank wrote: »

Noticed that as well. It does not specify of course of the 800 that have had their deaths recorded, how many were simply dumped in that manner as described. Also, one has to try and figure out how many died of natural causes and others that were allegedly left there to die.

Clearly an independent investigation is warranted.

I think we can assume that the conditions the children lived in (conditions provided by the nuns) had a massive impact on their ability to live.

As such while you very well may be able to put down 99% of the deaths as "natural causes", clearly many their deaths are unnatural as they in no way reflect the avg infant mortality rate during the years in questions within the Irish state.

marienbad

jank wrote: »

First of all thanks for accepting the basic fact of my original post. I glad you now agree with me.

Secondly, you contradict yourself in that post. You accept that Ireland was not a Theocracy, therefore an elected democratic government was the ultimate power of the state. With that accepted as fact how can you then say that the government of day did whatever they were told to do by the RCC? A pure contradiction.

Lastly, Where expressly am I defending the actions of the RCC and what specific action am I defending. You are mistaking my call for historical clarity of the facts to defending the RCC. A classic misnomer when one can't argue with the original argument put forward.

Jank do you accept that the RCC had a massive influence over every aspect of irish life and wasn't slow to use it. And would you agree it was fundamentally unhealthy for a new democracy ?

SpaceTime

This isn't a religious augment but what I don't get though is what kind inhuman 'things' were responsible for doing this??

I'm a guy in my late 20s and I don't have kids yet but my immediate instinct around kids is to protect them, look after them etc etc. I think it's hardwired into my brain.

How could anyone treat babies, kids and pregnant women like that? It goes against every instinct I have as a human!

I mean how could they justify it as 'right' in their heads? These were people who proclaimed to be all about love and peace too which makes it even more difficult to comprehend!

It's just mindboggling to me. I'll never understand how they justified such behaviour to themselves.

They really must have been able to dehumanise the people in their 'care' and disconnect their own humanity too.

It's just terrifying to think this could have happened in that kind of context and on such an industrial scale.

It's a very dangerous trait that some humans can just dehumanise others like that. This has all the hallmarks of some kind of genocide albeit aimed at a social or nonconforming class of people rather than an ethnic group.

It needs to be investigated fully and properly.

Cabaal

SpaceTime wrote: »

This isn't a religious augment but what I don't get though is what kind inhuman 'things' were responsible for doing this??

You're talking about people who see affection/love and sex with another human being as sinful, dirty and wrong.

They are disconnected from the normal impulses of our species....for that matter most species on our planet.

They deny themselves basic natural, normal urges. They saw themselves as different, almost better because they did not act out these normal natural urges and instead devoted themselves to a invisible being. Most repressed everything.

How can you really care for another of our species when you see pretty much anything involved in forming a bond with another of our species as wrong, dirty and sinful?

How can you really care about a child when you see all involved with its creation and birth as most sinful and dirty and the person that gives birth as dirty as well (remember women were churched after birth)......

Now add to that that you see them 10 times worse when that dirty and sinful baby comes from a far more dirty and sinful unmarried women. A person who should always be shamed for their awful act, churching them will never make them clean, they should live in shame in your eye's.

Thats how you can do these things,
You do these things because you've created a class system, you see these women as a lower form as human to you.

You see making them work and keeping the children away from them as doing them a favour, you are trying to save these dirty and utterly sinful women. They should thank you.

You don't understand loving bonds and you also see people as scum, thats how you can allow baby's to die. Thats how you can sell a women's baby to some American for money and think its all ok.

...and at the end of the day, you know that your leaders will support what you do and you know that the local population have been brain washed into looking down on these women as well.

SpaceTime

I know but it's still scary that people can just dehumanise 'the other'.

That 'other' just varies depending on which group is doing the persecuting!

I just wish we'd a society (globally) that was more focused on reality - people, relationships, scientific discovery and the world around us and less focused on dogmatic abstractions like religion and diehard, digmatic political philosophies.

It's just really scary how people can become so divorced from reality in this kinds of 'cults of dogma' type scenarios that they end up inflicting severe damage on others.

I mean we nearly obliterated all life on the planet with nuclear weapons in what boils down to a debate over communism vs capitalism!?

And how many people die or suffer in wars about abstract religious belief? Millions over the centuries.

You'd wonder about humans sometimes!

the_syco

jank wrote: »

Also, one has to try and figure out how many died of natural causes and others that were allegedly left there to die.

Death by starvation is a fairly natural cause. Death by lump hammer isn't.

=-=

We're talking about a weird cult in which tells people masturbation is a sin (unless they stopped that in the last 20 years), and you can't have sex outside of marriage.

In the past, these people saw themselves as some sort of "gods messenger", and had the power to banish rape victims and their offspring into dungeons for the rest of their lives.

So yes, I think they justified to themselves that starving kids to death was "just" doing "gods work"...

If any parish is found to have been complacent with this in the past, either they give money to their victims, or have their parish church pulled to the ground.

Autonomous Cowherd

It sometimes makes me genuinely wonder how intelligent kindly people can keep faith with an institution that has so patently mistreated the people who subscribed to it.
People talk about the good priests and the good nuns, and the times that were in it, as if this is some sort of excuse for what was clearly a vast mechanism of social control that manipulated the mores and morals of an entire society much in the manner of a brain-washing cult. I was all of 16 years old when I refused to attend their rituals anymore (and boy did i get some shyte for that!) It does not take genius to see past hypocrisy.
People are lazy when it comes to thinking things through...it would never have taken much to say as a rational adult ''Ah here!'', and to stop kowtowing to what was supposedly the only access going to spiritual wellbeing.
Even still people are marooned in ignorance, trotting along to holy Communions (mini-weddings) and doffing the cap like good little robots. I say all this is a devoted spiritual person, not as an atheist.
We all knew what was going on in those times. People do not toss hundreds of bodies into a pit without the community being well aware of the facts. The gardeners knew. The delivery men knew. The maintenance men knew. The ''lovely, decent, upstanding'' middle Ireland mothers and fathers abandoning those young adults they had borne at these places to hide their stigma from the cult leaders knew what was going on. A fresh body stinks as it decomposes and a fresh body every 2 weeks for decades creates a stink that lasts for decades. People walking past the walls knew. We were brainwashed members of a cult. There is no rescuing something built on that sort of cruelty.

Richardstorm

Just shocking, it is clear that this world are full of people with no honest morals. No value in humans if not perfect apparently!

Brian Shanahan

ryan101 wrote: »

Accuracy, and factual reporting.

Ooh, getting it wrong on one tiny detail is the worst you can do? Especially when your fellow travellers are arguing that the kids were killed because their parents were the worst society had to offer.

I suggest that you look to correct the attitude of your peers before you correct insignificant errors in fact of your betters.

Brian Shanahan

freedominacup wrote: »

A belief in God doesn't bring with it any compulsion to make any efforts to cover this up or explain it.

But a belief in god does give many people the excuse and justification to do great evil (like let 800 kids needlessly die, and then bury them unmarked and unmourned in a water tank) simply because someone somewhere wrote down that doing such evil in the name of your imaginary deity is the right and correct and moral thing to do.

jank

the_syco wrote: »

D
If any parish is found to have been complacent with this in the past, either they give money to their victims, or have their parish church pulled to the ground.

Why does it have to be either or.

iguana

Do I have this straight? The grave was discovered nearly 40 years ago and at some point in recent years some historians have been researching who these children were and the circumstances in which they died and have compared their findings to the national average, which suggests some sort of foul play? They then published their findings and that is how the press have started reporting about it?

So what happened in the 70s when the grave was found? Were the bodies exhumed and catalogued? Were the guards involved? Where are the bodies now?

lynski

Have they denied it? The church I mean, has there been any statement to say no this is a mistake, it didn't happen, it was only 40 or something?
Or is it that there are places all over the country, or world, with twice the average dead babies?

I Heart Internet

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

But a belief in god does give many people the excuse and justification to do great evil (like let 800 kids needlessly die, and then bury them unmarked and unmourned in a water tank) simply because someone somewhere wrote down that doing such evil in the name of your imaginary deity is the right and correct and moral thing to do.

Who wrote this down and where?

Hotblack Desiato

jank wrote: »

Why does it have to be either or.

OK, no half measures. Let's force the RCC to compensate their victims AND pull all their churches to the ground.

Bongalongherb

I feel very sick after reading this thread.

When is the RTE prime time investigation team going to deal with this ?.

I am amazed that this is being quietened up so far. As another person here said previously, contact your local TD and also government demanding a full investigation.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, this comes along. Now I do feel physically sick.

jank

ninja900 wrote: »

OK, no half measures. Let's force the RCC to compensate their victims AND pull all their churches to the ground.

So we are back to this again. Calling for the extrajudicial sanctioning of an organisation.

aboysham

jank wrote: »

So we are back to this again. Calling for the extrajudicial sanctioning of an organisation.

Crawl back into your septic tank.

Most people here are calling for judicial action.

freedominacup

Cabaal wrote: »

They made insane money!

Take the adoption, we know from Philomena Lee that her son was sold for around £1000 in 1950's,

Now for the sake of things, lets imagine that was say $800.
In todays money thats $7,899. But we also have to remember that $800 back in 1950's was ALOT of money.

The avg American yearly salary was $2,992 at that time.

Between selling off the good baby's and leaving the cost ineffective baby's to die they managed the books well to ensure they made good money.

purplecow1977 wrote: »

I volunteered in an orphanage abroad, and this happened quite regularly. Any babies with a 'deformity' or special need, were left to die in what were known as 'the dying rooms'. Truly horrible.

I know it's whataboutery but does anyone really believe that in many of the countries where Irish couples have been adopting babies over the past couple of decades that similar practices to this aren't happening often a few dozen/hundred feet from where these couples are selecting their children. You often hear of the huge costs involved in these adoptions, where is this money going? I would imagine more than a little of it finds it's way into the hands of whoever is controlling those orphanages.

We wouldn't want to forget that many of those misfortunate girls were brought to the doors of those places by their own parents. There's a certain amount of chicken and egg in it too. Were the homes started because of a demand from the public or were the public subjecting young girls to this horror because of the demands of the church? In many cases it was done to protect "the land". How many strong farmers daughters ended up in these places if they happened to get knocked up by another strong farmers son and both were of an age to get married? Wedding hastily arranged, job done.

However if the same girl happened to fall for a labourers son and became pregnant, whole other ballgame. The family would just want the situation dealt with and the girl back esp if she happened to be the only child/eldest of a family of girls. There would a number of suitable suitors in the area where the marriage would seal the deal on creating a much larger holding.

The fact that this social class dealt with the situation in this manner created it's own societal pressures for everyone else. An unmarried pregnant girl around the place became an unbareable source of shame for many families not least because of the "could they not just send her into the nuns and get it dealt with like everyone else" attitude. No-one likes to see dirty laundry like this being washed in public in case other people start asking questions about where their dirty laundry went.

None of what I posted here is an attempt to explain, condone or excuse the actions of the various orders in running these horrendous places but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that many families will not want this raked over because of decisions these families made over the past 100 years whether to put mothers into these places in this country or to adopt children from places like it in other countries esp over the past 20 years. There was a primetime/today-tonight investigation into the adoption of babies by foreign (mainly american) couples here in the 1950/60's around 20 years ago but it was killed very quickly as the first human interest stories started to emerge about Irish couples trials and tribulations in adopting abroad started to emerge. No-one wanted any odious comparisons being made between the pure of heart Irish couples adopting abroad and the corrupt, venal Americans paying off Irish nuns in order to get first choice of the latest crop of babies in the various mother and child homes within an easy shot of Shannon or Dublin 30 years previously.

What happened in Tuam is horrendus and there can be no reasonable explanation for it but it is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. There hasn't been any investigation because there's very few with clean hands on this one. The general public? many of whom brought family members to these places or got employment/business from them. The gardai? who brought huge numbers of girls to these places under court orders. The civil service? who paid for and supervised thses places. The church itself???? The politicians? who passed or didn't pass laws regulating these places.

Who do you want to run the investigation? What country doesn't have a scandal with some of the hallmarks of this one? if you were going to suggest an E.U. body.

Cabaal

freedominacup wrote: »

What happened in Tuam is horrendus and there can be no reasonable explanation for it but it is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. There hasn't been any investigation because there's very few with clean hands on this one. The general public? many of whom brought family members to these places or got employment/business from them.

Who were brain washed into thinking what they were doing was "for the best" when it came to sinful women,

The gardai? who brought huge numbers of girls to these places under court orders.

Again, the church were the moral guardians....apparently,

The civil service? who paid for and supervised thses places. The church itself???? The politicians? who passed or didn't pass laws regulating these places.

Like Uganda now, the church had/has its fingers deep into education, health and government policy. Add to this they brain washed the masses into looking down on these sort of women as lower classes,

I've ever encountered priests now that won't even talk to a women who's had a child outside of marriage, its not such a big deal now.

But when the local priest turned against you in the 30's then the whole town turned against you out of fear of going against the church.

kylith

People seem to forget that the church didn't just run these homes, they ran the schools too, so from the first moment of your education you were taught religious doctrine and the punishment for not learning this was a beating. The punishment for talking back to the priest or nun teaching you was a beating. You learned from a very young age that unmarried mothers were dirty, sinful Jezebels who deserved what they got. You learned that you did not question the Church, you did not talk out of place, kept you head down and did what you were told, you did nothing except be a good little boy or girl and say your prayers, or you got a beating.

I was listening to that lady that Philomena is based on on the radio a few weeks back. She seemed to not even realise that she'd had sex with the baby's father, because she didn't know what sex was. She didn't even realise that she was pregnant until her aunt asked her because she had no idea of the mechanism by which one gets pregnant. The man just wanted to do something and she let him because she didn't know what it was that he was doing, and she wound up in a home for it.

To say that the fault lies with the parents who brought the girls there is not correct. Is it right that their parents left their daughters in these places? Of course not but to use that to in any way diminish what the religious orders, well it's like finding out that prison guards routinely torture inmates and shrugging your shoulders and saying 'Well, the fault is with the judge who sentenced them'.

Thinking of the children in my own family who could have been born in one of these places because their parents weren't married is heartbreaking. Who knows what criteria the nuns used to decide who died and who was worth keeping? My cousin's child has frizzy hair, would that have been undesirable enough for her to be neglected to death? What of my nephew, he has a limp, would he have been worth keeping alive? Or my niece who was a late talker; would she have been left in a room to die because no-one would want to adopt a child who didn't talk?

ryan101

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

Ooh, getting it wrong on one tiny detail is the worst you can do? Especially when your fellow travellers are arguing that the kids were killed because their parents were the worst society had to offer.

I suggest that you look to correct the attitude of your peers before you correct insignificant errors in fact of your betters.

Actual facts and what actually took place is important, I've called for a full independent investigation and for the Gardai to investigate, if any crime has been committed then there should be prosecutions, a trial and prison for anyone found guilty.

What do you mean "your betters" ?

I Heart Internet

aboysham wrote: »

Crawl back into your septic tank.

Most people here are calling for judicial action.

Pulling churches to the ground is in the statute books is it?? :rolleyes:

Flippyfloppy

ryan101 wrote: »

Actual facts and what actually took place is important, I've called for a full independent investigation and for the Gardai to investigate, if any crime has been committed then there should be prosecutions, a trial and prison for anyone found guilty.

What do you mean "your betters" ?

Have you literally done this in Real Life or just on this forum?

I Heart Internet

ryan101 wrote: »

Actual facts and what actually took place is important.....

Hear, hear. Many on here are wetting themselves to tell us what the big, bad church did without even the first notion of what happened, when, why and how. I suspect, given the choice, they would prefer a bishop to be jailed a church pulled down as retribution rather than actually investigate the truth of these allegations.

Flippyfloppy

I Heart Internet wrote: »

Hear, hear. Many on here are wetting themselves to tell us what the big, bad church did without even the first notion of what happened, when, why and how. I suspect, given the choice, they would prefer a bishop to be jailed a church pulled down as retribution rather than actually investigate the truth of these allegations.

:rolleyes:

Ok, I Heart Internet, how would you explain this away, if you were on the defence team for the RCC?? I'm sure you're dying to be asked!

I Heart Internet

Flippyfloppy wrote: »

Have you literally done this in Real Life or just on this forum?

There have been people on this thread who claim to know what went on in this home, but have declined to go and tell the Gardai or other authorities. That's a mor eworrying thing than people restricting their call for an investigate to the online world.

Cabaal

I Heart Internet, most people in Ireland would gladly vote in a referendum to allow the Irish Government to have the powers to seize church assets which could be then sold to compensate victims.

To date so many of the religious orders have not be forthcoming when it comes to compensation and co-operating with investigations, not just in Ireland but worldwide.

This brave man said it best
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9jHqndf9Kx4#t=228

I Heart Internet

Flippyfloppy wrote: »

:rolleyes:

Ok, I Heart Internet, how would you explain this away, if you were on the defence team for the RCC?? I'm sure you're dying to be asked!

It's not about explaining anything. It's about establishing the cold hard facts, rather than indulging in speculation.

Flippyfloppy

I Heart Internet wrote: »

It's not about explaining anything. It's about establishing the cold hard facts, rather than indulging in speculation.

Do you know any cold hard facts at the moment?