The brutal treatment Tralee woman Catherine Coffey O Brien suffered in institutions will live with her forever. She is one of more than 56,000 women who were incarcerated in Mother and Baby homes across the country.
Though she may be considered one of the lucky ones as she escaped while pregnant and ultimately kept her beloved son, now 31, others did not get this opportunity. Instead, they were forced to give their babies up for adoption and many died.
The shocking report by the Commission into Mother and Baby Homes published yesterday shows that 56,000 women were sent to institutions from 1922 to 1998 and more than 57,000 babies were born in these very same institutions with one in seven dying, a mortality rate much higher than the infant mortality rate of that time.