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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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obplayer

iguana wrote: »

Thanks to everyone who signed and shared the petition. I have now updated the target to 10,000 as at this rate, the original target should be exceeded in the next couple of hours. Tomorrow, once it's 24 hours old, it's time to start sending it to Fitzgerald's office and our local TDs outlining just how quickly so many people have signed. Hopefully the show of national and international support for an investigation will play a part in making it happen.

Sent it to friends in England and Australia.

strandroad

Could someone please repost the link to the petition, I'd like to sign but I can't find it, I'm on my phone... Thanks!

shruikan2553

mhge wrote: »

Could someone please repost the link to the petition, I'd like to sign but I can't find it, I'm on my phone... Thanks!

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/

Lingua Franca

Flippyfloppy wrote: »

Should we tweet with #tuambabies?

#800babies is the hashtag I've been seeing.

Lisha

Flippyfloppy wrote: »

Should we tweet with #tuambabies?

I did but stupidly only had link in some tweets before I copped #tuambabies

Am not much cop in twitter

robindch

iguana wrote: »

Thanks to everyone who signed and shared the petition.

Congrats on getting it out so fast and getting so many signers!

One suggestion though - the text calls for a judicial investigation, but the header calls for a Gardai investigation. I'm not sure if it's too late to sort that out, but it would be worth it if it's possible.

Flippyfloppy

Lisha wrote: »

I did but stupidly only had link in some tweets before I copped #tuambabies

Am not much cop in twitter

Me neither! Will do #800babies too

buzsywuzsy

Petition signed and shared.

By the way, this story was covered by the Connacht Tribune back in February. I've a link to it, but I'm on my phone so not sure it'll work.

http://twitter.com/endacunningham/status/473928366383693825/photo/1

Temptamperu

I am quite embarrassed to be Irish today.

Benny_Cake

Signed it.

The state pathologist needs to get on this, if they haven't already.

SpaceTime

Temptamperu wrote: »

I am quite embarrassed to be Irish today.

I'm not, I'm just very angry with the people who covered it up.

I'll decide whether I'm embarrassed or not when I see how the authorities handle it. If they do a cover up job, then yes I'll be more annoyed than embarrassed! It'll certainly decide what way I'll be voting in the next election if I detect any sense of a sweep under the carpet job.

obplayer

iguana wrote: »

Thanks to everyone who signed and shared the petition. I have now updated the target to 10,000 as at this rate, the original target should be exceeded in the next couple of hours. Tomorrow, once it's 24 hours old, it's time to start sending it to Fitzgerald's office and our local TDs outlining just how quickly so many people have signed. Hopefully the show of national and international support for an investigation will play a part in making it happen.

Just a suggestion, but when you send it to Fitzgerald etc. could you also leave it open? The more signatures the better and this is getting international attention which is great, though too late for the dead children of course.

Mark Hamill

Czarcasm wrote: »

For anyone to use this tragedy as representative of the RCC is just low IMO.

Well Toni Maguire, an archaeologist from Northern Ireland who specialises in marginalised burials (found 11,000 burials in land accidentally sold by the RCC in Belfast), was on Newstalk today and talked about sites like these being in almost every townland. (Go to ~13 mins in to hear her discuss it).

The rate at which bodies were dumped in Tuam may have been higher then elsewhere, but such body dumping seems to have been a common occurrence, even until the 1990s.

marienbad

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Well Toni Maguire, an archaeologist from Northern Ireland who specialises in marginalised burials (found 11,000 burials in land accidentally sold by the RCC in Belfast), was on Newstalk today and talked about sites like these being in almost every townland. (Go to ~13 mins in to hear her discuss it).

The rate at which bodies were dumped in Tuam may have been higher then elsewhere, but such body dumping seems to have been a common occurrence, even until the 1990s.

Jeez, they would turn a shilling out of anything.

kylith

mrsbyrne wrote: »

I'm saying that I fail to see what bearing these cases have on the Tuam tragedy. Taking into account that we are still totally in the dark about Tuam. As I've now said many, many times.

The bearing that it has is that it shows that the neglect which was happening in Tuam was not an isolated incident; that neglect and high mortality rates were not uncommon in homes run by religious orders.

Czarcasm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Well Toni Maguire, an archaeologist from Northern Ireland who specialises in marginalised burials (found 11,000 burials in land accidentally sold by the RCC in Belfast), was on Newstalk today and talked about sites like these being in almost every townland. (Go to ~13 mins in to hear her discuss it).

The rate at which bodies were dumped in Tuam may have been higher then elsewhere, but such body dumping seems to have been a common occurrence, even until the 1990s.

Mark there's a world of a difference between the cilliní (graveyards for unbaptised children), and what happened in Tuam, where the bodies of children of the workhouse were afforded no dignity in being unceremoniously dumped, discarded, and hardly given a second thought, only to be discovered by accident when the concrete broke, and even then the local community remained silent, until forty years later when these children are finally being remembered and justice is being sought for the way in which they were treated.

shruikan2553

Youth Defense arent saying anything about this, I know theyre mainly about abortion but if someone was killing live babies they would be all over it.

Mark Hamill

Czarcasm wrote: »

Mark there's a world of a difference between the cilliní (graveyards for unbaptised children), and what happened in Tuam, where the bodies of children of the workhouse were afforded no dignity in being unceremoniously dumped, discarded, and hardly given a second thought, only to be discovered by accident when the concrete broke, and even then the local community remained silent, until forty years later when these children are finally being remembered and justice is being sought for the way in which they were treated.

The cilliní are not the only types of grave sites the archaeologist mentions, she also specifically mentions graves attached to workhouses.
Even so, the large cilliní site in Milltown in Belfast seemed to equally lack dignity in how it performed it's burials much like Tuam:

“There probably wasn’t a Catholic family in Belfast who weren’t connected with Milltown cemetery in some way over the generations,” Ms Maguire says. “A boggy area of Milltown was in use for these so-called pagan burials, up to the 1990s. The daily load of dead babies would arrive from the hospital and were laid in mass graves like carpet.

“One father recalls claiming his dead baby from the hospital and bringing it to the cemetery. The grave digger tossed the dead baby, into what was essentially a wet hole in the ground, like a piece of rubbish.

While how the children died in Tuam is obviously a large part of the anger this issue raises, people have also expressed anger at how they were unceremoniously dumped after their deaths, an occurrence that seems quite commonplace across the country.

Lingua Franca

shruikan2553 wrote: »

Youth Defense arent saying anything about this, I know theyre mainly about abortion but if someone was killing live babies they would be all over it.

Not just Youth Defense but Life Institute, Pro Life campaign, Precious Life, Family and Life... not a single word on the matter from any of them.

nagirrac

This could be a watershed event in Irish history, if handled properly and maturely. The take home message here is no different to the harsh realities that on a grander scale Germany for example had to face after WWII, and to give them due credit, compared to other countries with former abusive regimes, they handled it fairly well. It is difficult to confront the ghosts of our past, but it is now long past time for Ireland to finally face up to its demons.

The root cause here, just as with all atrocity, is a power structure with no accountability. The RCC fell into a position of power after Irish independence was secured, and had effectively as much control over society as the Soviet secret police. They were not just above the law, they made the laws, and woe betide anyone who stepped out of line, especially if you were female. The gutless politicians who empowered them and deferred to them are just as guilty, as ultimately they were responsible for the security of every Irish citizen and they failed utterly in this regard. The harsh reality is that the cruelest and most vicious sadists and pedophiles in the country were allowed access to the country's most vulnerable, and no, not all of them were members of religious orders, although many were. The CICA report is a veritable who's who, outrageously without the names, of every sick monster who was given access to Irish societies most vulnerable.

A word of caution, if I may. The individuals we are concerned with, whether mothers and children abandoned by society, or banished to hellholes like Tuam or industrial schools, were in many cases the equivalent of those on the fringes of society today. Keep that in mind every time you hear people reference those on the lower rungs of society as scobes and chavs, and wax eloquent about what should be done to them. It is the same mindset and judgmental urge that banished our former citizens to the gulag.

I have signed the petition and will urge all I know to do the same.

TheChizler

Initial target of 2,000 reached! Well done and thank you Iguana, and everyone!

PopePalpatine

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

800 babies and young children die in Church care and are chucked in an unmarked hole, and you are worried about someone slandering the good name of the Nuns?

That reminds me of another poster here mentioning their aunt reacting to the abuse scandal with a cold, "This scandal will undo the Church's good work!" or something like that.

I had only intended for PopePalpatine's Law to be something satirical, and not darkly humorous.

Zambia

I have seen the church do great work and have met many priests I admire.

This is however horrific.

I don't want a ****ing monument.

I want a full police investigation of the site. Records seized under warrant of everyone who worked there. Including the financial spending .

The surviving staff interviewed in relation to the reason for the mass deaths.

If staff are found to have been culpable charged and sentenced .

What I don't want is some half assed tribunal where no one takes the blame.

If possible each of these children buried as they should have been.

I don't care what the RCC involvement is a person put those children in a room to die. I want those people and everyone that instructed them to answer for that.

bumper234

As of 7:00 this morning 2415 signers.

Akrasia

The independent has an article today
Septic tank grave for 796 children

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/septic-tank-grave-for-796-children-30327479.html

Catherine Corless says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

All catholic apologists should wake up to the reality of what this organisation really stood for

Elderly people recalled that the children attended a local school - but were segregated from other pupils - until they were adopted or placed, at around seven or eight, into church-run industrial schools that featured unpaid labour and abuse. In keeping with Catholic teaching, such out-of-wedlock children were denied baptism and, if they died at such facilities, Christian burial....

....Records indicate that the former Tuam workhouse's septic tank was converted specifically to serve as the body disposal site for the orphanage.

Tuam locals discovered the bone repository in 1975 as cement covering the buried tank was broken away. Before Ms Corless' research this year, they believed the remains were mostly victims of the mid-19th century famine that decimated the population of western Ireland.

The church wants to 'organise fund raising to build a monument'
The only appropriate monument to the events that happened in Tuam and across ireland would be for the ordinary catholics of Ireland to turn their backs on the RC church once and for all and for the state to conduct full criminal investigations into how these women and children were treated.

Cabaal

Utterly disgusting that yet again we see this again and we once again see the legacy of catholic Ireland, yet so many Catholics continue to hold up the catholic church has some sort of moral guardian
:rolleyes:

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/06/04/mortification-once-again/

shruikan2553

Cabaal wrote: »

Utterly disgusting that yet again we see this again and we once again see the legacy of catholic Ireland, yet so many Catholics continue to hold up the catholic church has some sort of moral guardian
:rolleyes:

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/06/04/mortification-once-again/

I'm sure we'll hear later that some sort of report will be done. It would be great if something was done with this report, or at least the EU/UN puts pressure on our government to.
Here we go, as they said we're are currently at stage 4. http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/01/16/notes-on-irish-scandals/

SpaceTime

I'm actually not convinced that the state is capable of investigating this objectively.

pauldla

SpaceTime wrote: »

I'm actually not convinced that the state is capable of investigating this objectively.

Yeah, I'd second that. It seems to me that this is going to get huge, and nobody is going to come out of it looking good.

smokingman

SpaceTime wrote: »

I'm actually not convinced that the state is capable of investigating this objectively.

Given their handling of the last few scandals, I'm in agreement here.