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Canada News.Net
2 days ago
- General
- Canada News.Net
Excavations begin at child mass grave site in Ireland
Excavations begin Monday of an unmarked mass burial site at a former mother and baby home in westernIrelandsuspected of containing the remains of hundreds of infants and youngchildren. The planned two-year probe by Irish and foreign experts in Tuam comes more than a decade after an amateur historian first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there. Subsequent 2016-2017 test excavations found significant quantities of baby remains in a subterranean disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within ahousingcomplex. Catholic nuns ran a so-called "mother and baby" institution there between 1925 and 1961,housingwomen who had become pregnant outside ofmarriageand been shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem. Watch moreIrish church and state apologise for appalling treatment in mother and baby homes Oppressive and misogynistic, the institutions -- which operated nationwide, some not closing until as recently as 1998 -- represent a dark chapter in the history of once overwhelmingly Catholic and socially conservative Ireland. A six-year enquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide. Records unearthed show as many as 796 babies and young children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. Its grounds have been left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972 and housing was built there. 'A fierce battle' "These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers," Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters earlier this month. "And they were denied dignity and respect in death." Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation, alongside experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States. It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains found, its director Daniel MacSweeney told a recent press conference in Tuam. It follows local historian Catherine Corless in 2014 producing evidence that the 796 children -- from newborns to a nine-year-old -- had died at the home. State-issued death certificates she compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions tomeaslesand whooping cough, were listed as the cause of death. Corless's research indicated the corpses were likely placed in the disused septic tank discovered in 1975, while prompting the state-backed enquiries that have uncovered the full scandal of the homes. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, according to MacSweeney. A 2.4-meter-high (7.9 feet) hoarding has been installed around the perimeter of the excavation area, which is also subject to 24-hour security monitoring to ensure its forensic integrity. "It's been a fierce battle. When I started this nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs," Corless, 71, told AFP in May. "I was just begging: 'take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied'," she said. (FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Bangkok Post
6 days ago
- Bangkok Post
Excavations begin at child mass grave site in Ireland
DUBLIN - Excavations begin Monday of an unmarked mass burial site at a former mother and baby home in western Ireland suspected of containing the remains of hundreds of infants and young children. The planned two-year probe by Irish and foreign experts in Tuam comes more than a decade after an amateur historian first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there. Subsequent 2016-2017 test excavations found significant quantities of baby remains in a subterranean disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex. Catholic nuns ran a so-called "mother and baby" institution there between 1925 and 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and been shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem. Oppressive and misogynistic, the institutions -- which operated nationwide, some not closing until as recently as 1998 -- represent a dark chapter in the history of once overwhelmingly Catholic and socially conservative Ireland. A six-year enquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide. Records unearthed show as many as 796 babies and young children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. Its grounds have been left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972 and housing was built there. - 'A fierce battle' - "These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers," Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters earlier this month. "And they were denied dignity and respect in death." Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation, alongside experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States. It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains found, its director Daniel MacSweeney told a recent press conference in Tuam. It follows local historian Catherine Corless in 2014 producing evidence that the 796 children -- from newborns to a nine-year-old -- had died at the home. State-issued death certificates she compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the cause of death. Corless's research indicated the corpses were likely placed in the disused septic tank discovered in 1975, while prompting the state-backed enquiries that have uncovered the full scandal of the homes. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, according to MacSweeney. A 2.4-meter-high (7.9 feet) hoarding has been installed around the perimeter of the excavation area, which is also subject to 24-hour security monitoring to ensure its forensic integrity. "It's been a fierce battle. When I started this nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs," Corless, 71, told AFP in May.
Int'l Business Times
6 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
Excavations Begin At Child Mass Grave Site In Ireland
Excavations begin Monday of an unmarked mass burial site at a former mother and baby home in western Ireland suspected of containing the remains of hundreds of infants and young children. The planned two-year probe by Irish and foreign experts in Tuam comes more than a decade after an amateur historian first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there. Subsequent 2016-2017 test excavations found significant quantities of baby remains in a subterranean disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex. Catholic nuns ran a so-called "mother and baby" institution there between 1925 and 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and been shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem. Oppressive and misogynistic, the institutions -- which operated nationwide, some not closing until as recently as 1998 -- represent a dark chapter in the history of once overwhelmingly Catholic and socially conservative Ireland. A six-year enquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide. Records unearthed show as many as 796 babies and young children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. Its grounds have been left largely untouched after the institution was knocked down in 1972 and housing was built there. "These children were denied every human right in their lifetime, as were their mothers," Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters earlier this month. "And they were denied dignity and respect in death." Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation, alongside experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States. It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible, and re-interment of the remains found, its director Daniel MacSweeney told a recent press conference in Tuam. It follows local historian Catherine Corless in 2014 producing evidence that the 796 children -- from newborns to a nine-year-old -- had died at the home. State-issued death certificates she compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the cause of death. Corless's research indicated the corpses were likely placed in the disused septic tank discovered in 1975, while prompting the state-backed enquiries that have uncovered the full scandal of the homes. The ODAIT team was finally appointed in 2023 to lead the Tuam site excavation. DNA samples have already been collected from around 30 relatives, and this process will be expanded in the coming months to gather as much genetic evidence as possible, according to MacSweeney. A 2.4-meter-high (7.9 feet) hoarding has been installed around the perimeter of the excavation area, which is also subject to 24-hour security monitoring to ensure its forensic integrity. "It's been a fierce battle. When I started this nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs," Corless, 71, told AFP in May. "I was just begging: 'take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied'," she said. A six-year enquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period AFP Records unearthed show as many as 796 babies and young children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated AFP Ireland's Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation, alongside international experts AFP
Irish Examiner
12-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Alison O'Reilly: It took a global spotlight for many to accept hundreds of babies are buried in a septic tank in Tuam
As I sat in gridlock traffic in my hometown of Drogheda recently, I saw hundreds of well-dressed families of all ages, carrying beautiful bouquets and plants pots, as they all walked in the same direction. I eventually made it past three Garda checkpoints directing traffic away from the congested areas until I realised where everyone was going — it was the annual blessings of the graves. The scene could be mistaken for an All-Ireland final, or a concert, except people were in their Sunday best. It marked a stark contrast to the treatment of the hundreds of innocent little children buried in and around a septic tank system in a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, run by the Bon Secours order of nuns. While not all the well-turned-out people at the blessings of the graves will be committed and practicing Catholics, the popularity of the yearly event shows the truth of how Irish people have a great tradition of mourning the dead. When I wrote a story that was published on the front of a national newspaper 11 years ago, I thought there would be a visceral outcry. But really it was greeted with a shrug of apathy, and there was no response at all from the government. That was until one week after publication when the Mail Online picked it up, leading to global explosure, and within the hour it quite rightly turned into one of the biggest stories to come out of Ireland in the past decade. The story forced the government to respond. It opened the floodgates for survivors of these awful institutions to speak out and so began our long fight to have the children's remains removed from around the septic tank system they were dumped in, after they died while in the care of the Bon Secours nuns. I first heard of the mass grave in Tuam when I was contacted by Anna Corrigan in Dublin in early 2014. She had read an article I had written the previous week on the unveiling of a headstone for the 222 children who died in the Bethany Homes in Dublin. Anna Corrigan with journalist Alison O'Reilly, who originally broke the story. Picture: Chani Anderson The moving event, organised by Professor Niall Meehan and the late Bethany home campaigner Derek Lister, took place in St Jerome's cemetery. My article was published the following Sunday. Anna contacted me the next day. I was sitting with my two children in my living room when I saw her email. 'I want to talk to you about my two brothers who are buried in a mass grave in Tuam,' she said. 'There are 800 babies there'. I read and re-read the email, and I'll admit, I found it all too hard to believe. My sister had lived in Tuam for 13 years. I knew the town well. Neither of us had ever heard of a plot containing hundreds of tiny remains from children who died while in the mother and baby home. The email, while well written and containing her home address, just didn't seen credible. But I was immediately interested and, I remember thinking 'I'm calling to her house first thing tomorrow'. Unlike some great historical discoveries, which come about because of huge amounts of money invested in the work of teams of researchers and historians, this discovery was driven solely by one homemaker working as a historian in her spare time from her home in Co Galway. Between keeping her home and looking after her family, Catherine Corless has managed to bring dignity to a group of forgotten children of Tuam. While in Dublin, at her kitchen table, Anna was learning about her mother's two secret sons. That Monday evening in 2014, at my home in Dublin, Anna reached out with the heartbreaking truth of her life about her mother Bridget Dolan, who never told her about her brothers. Her email said: 'I would like to let you know that there is a similar issue ongoing with a graveyard connected to the mother and baby home at Tuam, Co Galway. 'There is a small plot containing almost 800 children which has been left unmarked and neglected by the Bon Secours nuns who ran the mother and baby home. The plot where the children were buried was previously a sewerage tank.' Between them, the women had a mountain of work that was carefully compiled, noted, in plastic folders with headings, highlighted, and in boxes marking out what each one contained. When I went to Anna's house a few days later she gave me contact details for Catherine, whom I rang immediately. I was instantly impressed with her rational, calm evidence and diligence. Her work was such a vital matter of public interest. Like all journalists who are presented with a powerful story like this, you are trained to instantly ask yourself "where at the holes in this story?" and "how do we stand it up?" Historian Catherine Corless, whose years of meticulous research uncovered the burial of up to 800 children on the grounds of the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Picture: Chani Anderson While Catherine gave me a detailed overall picture of the home and the children's names, Anna gave me individual examples of how her own brothers, whom she had only learned about in 2013, disappeared from the care of the nuns. I went into the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registry, which is not covered by Data Protection, and checked John and William Dolan's certificates. Just as Anna said, there was a birth cert for both boys, in 1946 and 1950, but only one death cert — for John in 1947. She had made a Freedom of Information request to Tusla, and it provided her with details of how William was marked dead in the nuns' ledgers, but had no official death cert. Was he the only child whose records stated this? I spent day and night for the next few weeks, checking everything Catherine and Anna had said. With the help of Anna, Catherine, and Professor Thomas Garavan (whose mother and her six siblings had been in the home), we published the '800 babies in a mass grave' story on May 25, 2014. But to our bitter disappointment, this huge revelation, that 11 years later would lead to Ireland's first ever mass grave exhumation, only received a small follow up on RTÉ's Nuacht. I was baffled. Apart from the media, what about our 160-plus TDs? There was no outrage, no reaction, and no one spoke up. However, hundreds of people did take to Twitter (now X) and Facebook and began a discussion under the hashtags #800babies and #tuambabies. In the week that followed, apart from a detailed section on RTÉ's Liveline with Philip Boucher Hayes and Newstalk with Jonathan Healy, there was no reaction here at all. Did people just simply not want to know? Catherine, who at the time had little experience with the media, was a natural when she spoke out, a person you felt you could trust. All I, Catherine, Anna, and Thomas wanted was justice for the children who died and for the children to be given a dignified burial. But the dam didn't burst until the following week on June 2, 2014. Little did we know what was about to happen. The MailOnline, the global news website, contacted me and asked me for the story I had written on the 'mass grave of children in the west of Ireland'. The story was up online by 11am. Catherine rang me within the hour to say that she was being interviewed by dozens of national stations. 'Alison,' she gasped down the phone. ' The Washington Post has just been on. They're following up your story and wanted to talk to me.' And it didn't end there. A frenzy exploded on social media, the #tuambabies hashtag began to trend, and every global media organisation ran the story, including Sky News, CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera, and CBS. The government was then forced to respond. Then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who was in the US at the time, was being doorstepped by the American media about the Tuam Babies. He responded by saying the Government was going to discuss it and that an inquiry was under consideration. But the story of the Tuam Babies sat quietly here for the first week until the international media took hold of it. I often wondered why that happened. Could people simply not believe that hundreds of babies had been dumped into a sewage tank, or that the thoughts of it were just too big? I still struggle to understand the precise reason for such a state of denial — but denial it undoubtedly was. Nonetheless, for the next six weeks, the floodgates opened, and every national and international newspaper and airwaves were full of gut-wrenching stories from the survivors of these hell holes that were dotted all over the country and not just in Tuam. Their silence was broken, and they were given a voice. The dead were also no longer going to stay quiet. Family members, campaigners, survivors, and good decent people began to speak out at their utter horror of what the State and church did to all of these innocent women and children. The intergenerational trauma is not referenced enough and for those who believe you can "just get over it and move on", there is no such thing. Trauma does not discriminate. Then came the inevitable backlash, the kind of thing that happens when people in power are challenged. One American reporter told me that he "couldn't see how this was true". Then queries were raised about the septic tank and how that volume of children could actually fit into it. The story was even branded by some as a 'hoax', despite the fact that none of the critics could explain where the missing children had been buried. Nobody could provide a rational explanation for where these 796 children had gone. Instead, some tried to pick holes in it. People said it wasn't a septic tank; it was another type of tank. Someone rang me and said: "I hope, for your sake, the children are in the grave, or your career is over." But all I ever wanted to know (and still do) is, if the children are not on the site subject to excavation next week, then where are they? For 11 years I have written about about the Tuam babies and supported Catherine in her quest for truth as well as those with families — Anna, Thomas, Annette McKay, Peter Mulryan, and the only surviving mother of the Tuam home, Chrissie Tully — in the hope we could get the grave open. A commission of investigation into mother and baby homes was established by then-minister James Reilly in early 2015. Anna Corrigan, walking away from the Tuam site, where her two infant brothers are believed to be buried, shortly before it was closed off for excavation. Picture: Chani Anderson It examined 14 mother and baby homes around the country, plus a further four so-called county homes, and the final report was due in February 2018 but did not arrive until January 2021. In the end, it was a huge disappointment but an interesting historical record. It did not, nor was its job, to hold anyone to account. In the end, the minister for children explained that 'all of society was to blame'. They were some of the first words from a government that did not take full responsibility for its predecessors, the regulators of these institutions. A State apology was given. I'm sure some survivors appreciated it, but a large part of society was disgusted by it. The Bon Secours order and Galway County Council also apologised to survivors and families. When the confirmation of the Tuam grave finally came from Katherine Zappone in 2017, we were vindicated. But the exhumation still did not happen. Instead, we had to fight on to see this happen. Two years ago, Cork man Daniel MacSweeney was appointed to oversee the intervention of the Tuam site — I was still sceptical, even though he was in situ, building his team and being open with the media. For years I said 'I'll believe it when I see it', and last Monday, I did see it. As the country's first ever mass exhumation prepares to take place on July 14, 2025, the Tuam babies' story has shown how ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Read More Watch: Anna Corrigan and Catherine Corless speak at Tuam site
News.com.au
10-07-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
‘Ireland's darkest secret': 796 babies buried in mass grave
It was not until her fifties that 'only child' Anna Corrigan discovered she actually had two older brothers she never knew – and could never know. Both boys had died as infants at St Mary's Mother and Baby Home in the west of Ireland, and became two of an estimated 796 babies secretly buried in a septic tank beneath the site. The home, run by Catholic order of nuns The Bon Secours Sisters between 1925 and 1961, took in women – often the victims of rape – who got pregnant out of marriage. It is believed a child died there every two weeks. Now, a decade the scandal first hit headlines in 2014, work to excavate the mass grave will finally begin, The Sun reports. Speaking at the grounds of the demolished home in Tuam, which later became a housing estate, Ms Corrigan, 68, read out a letter she had written to her late mother Bridget in 2017. 'I was an only child, but now I'm a third child,' she said. 'God only knows how that feels. I used to think I was special, unique, but that too has changed.' Hunger and neglect Ms Corrigan also reflected on the trauma her mother would have experienced in the home, adding: 'How did you feel being away from your family, ostracised from your village and giving birth to your children alone?'. Bridget gave birth to John Desmond Dolan on February 22, 1946, weighing in at a healthy nine pounds (4.08kg). However, an inspection report retrieved by Ms Corrigan and dated April 1947, described a 13-month-old John as 'a miserable, emaciated child with a voracious appetite and no control over his bodily functions'. Little John died two months later. The cause was given as 'measles'. Meanwhile, his brother William Joseph Dolan was born on May 21, 1950. No official death certificate has been found. Anna discovered the existence of her older brothers after hearing an argument between some relatives. She began to investigate, and it was when she reported William as a missing person in 2013 that she was put in contact with local historian Catherine Corliss, who had also begun digging into the home's terrible past. Ms Corliss uncovered how hunger and neglect were rife at the home. 'The children were treated as commodities,' she previously said. 'The prettier babies were set up for adoption – it was a money-making racket. The sicker ones were put away and allowed to die.' Ms Corrigan and Ms Corliss took what they had found about the babies' deaths and burials to local papers in 2014. Then they turned to journalist Alison O'Reilly to take it national. Within days, Tuam was making headlines around the world. 'This is the darkest secret in Irish history now exposed,' O'Reilly told The Sun. 'People need to know that it's black and ugly and rotten and what they did to the children that were born in those homes was an absolute disgrace. 'You wouldn't do it to a dog.' The controversy led to the Irish government setting up the Mother and Baby Homes Inquiry, which confirmed significant quantities of human remains had been found in an unmarked grave in Tuam in 2017. Devastatingly, Ms Corrigan's story is replicated hundreds of times over. Annette McKay, 71, now living in Manchester, grew up knowing she had an older sister called Mary Margaret who had died as an infant. But what she never knew was that nuns had dumped her in a mass unmarked grave. She told The Sun: 'It was disbelief at first.' 'We imagined when we spoke about it that in some churchyard in the west of Ireland would be a little marked grave that said 'Mary Margaret, daughter of Maggie O'Connor'. 'Then to find out that the nuns had put 796 children in a sewage tank, it was pretty mind-boggling.' Ms McKay's mother Maggie had kept the existence of her first child a secret for decades. She only revealed the painful truth when she was 70, following the birth of a great-grandchild. 'It rocked my world because I considered myself mum's eldest daughter,' Ms McKay said. Aged 17, Maggie had been sent to the Tuam home in the 1940s after being raped. But six months after giving birth, she was callously told by nuns 'the child of your sin is dead'. Ms McKay discovered that the baby's death certificate had been signed off by a lady described as a cleaner at the home. For Ms Corliss, the past decade has been a battle to uncover the full truth behind the horror. 'I knew it was wrong, I knew it was terrible, and it just strengthened me to keep fighting to the bitter end, which I did,' the historian told The Sun. 'Terrible price' 'The government finally buckled because they had to because of pressure from the media, and pressure from other mother and baby home groups. It was just constantly keeping the story out there.' The government made a formal apology in 2021 after a judicial commission carried out a five-year investigation into a network of mother and baby homes across the country. Irish prime minister Micheal Martin said Ireland had suffered a warped attitude to sex. 'Young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction,' he said. 'As a society we embraced judgmental, moral certainty, a perverse religious morality and control which was so damaging. 'What was so very striking was the absence of basic kindness.' However, for Tuam locals, the scandal had always been an open secret, with the septic tank burial area being known as the babies' graveyard. Resident Bernie Lunn told The Sun: 'We knew it was the babies' graveyard.' 'When we were small, we were told by our parents when we were going out there playing, we were always told not to go over near the babies,' the 53-year-old continued. 'I feel very sorry for the families, obviously. I think it's very wrong what was done.' The excavation of the site will now try to identify the remains. And for those involved, it is about returning dignity to the families of those infants denied a proper burial. Forensic archaeologist Dr Niamh McCullagh, who is in charge of the dig, said: 'This is a very specific situation where a sewage tank has been reused, repurposed to deposit children and infants who died. 'That's not acceptable under anybody's standards and there's been a growing acceptance of that and a growing understanding of that. 'For me, it's about removing them from their current location as individuals if we can and then let them be reburied properly. 'That's the minimum I expect us to achieve.' Overseeing the work is Director of Authorised Intervention Daniel MacSweeney. 'The overarching element to all of this I think is dignity and the restoration of dignity in death to these children who have been buried in this manifestly inappropriate place,' he told The Sun. 'We want to make sure the families of these babies understand exactly what is happening and aren't surprised by anything that happens. 'Then they can give their babies a proper and dignified burial.' In response to the scandal, the Bon Secours Sisters previously issued an apology. It read: 'We did not live up to our Christianity when running the home. 'We failed to respect the inherent dignity of the women and children who came to the home. 'We failed to offer them the compassion that they so badly needed. 'We were part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness and terrible hurt. 'We acknowledge in particular that infants and children who died at the home were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way. 'For all that, we are deeply sorry.'
