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The scandal of the “banished babies” in Ireland
30 April 2021 By Asymmetrical Haircuts, for JusticeInfo.net
Over several decades and into the 1970’s, thousands of unmarried women were forced into mother and baby homes run by the church or the state in Ireland. 50,000 babies were taken away from their mothers. Women from 12-years old and into their forties were “paying for their sins”. For six years, a government commission has investigated the matter. A 3,000-page report came out last January. It was a secret inquiry. It concluded that there was no abuse. Individual victims are still stripped of their identities and still have no access to their birth records. They enjoy no compensation. Our partners from Asymmetrical Haircut, Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, talked to Mary Harney, a victim and now a tutor at the Human Rights Law clinic at the National University in Galway, and Maeve O’Rourke, a lecturer in Human Rights Law at Galway. “We have a mess on o
Credit:Photo montage by tara axford
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Joan McDermott was 16 and fresh out of boarding school when she met her boyfriend Tony, a medical student, in their rural hometown in County Cork, Ireland. Together for about a year, they had sex twice. She fell pregnant.
âI honestly didnât know that was how you got a baby,â says Joan, now 73 and living in the small coastal town of Cobh in Cork. âWhen I told my mother I was three monthsâ pregnant, she said to go upstairs and pack a small bag; Iâd be going away. Then she stood in the hallway while I rang my boyfriend. His family ran a well-known local business; he said he was sorry but that he could do nothing for me.â
Mother and baby homes report fails to fully address the issue of illegal adoptions
It is estimated that 15% of children born in Ireland s mother and baby homes were illegally adopted, but this week s report has left the issue officially at least hidden in plain sight
Newspapers in the 1950s were able to report that hundreds of children were being flown to the US and the work of researchers including Conall Ó Fátharta and Mike Milotte make it clear that Ireland was the centre of a vast international forced adoption ring. Picture: iStock
Thu, 14 Jan, 2021 - 11:00
Neil Michael
It’s easy to see how Tuam defined public perceptions of mother and baby homes.