Mass unmarked grave for 800 babies in Tuam

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?

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.

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.

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?