Latest news with #CatherineCorless
The Guardian
6 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Why has it taken a decade to exhume the bodies of the 800 dead babies of Tuam?
A young girl played on a swing near a mass grave as the names of hundreds of children who died in a mother-and-baby institution in Ireland were read out during a memorial service late last year. The bright day turned to dark in the time it took. Now, the playground near the site in Tuam has been dismantled and the long-awaited exhumation has begun. But why has it taken more than a decade since it emerged that those dead children were likely buried in sewage chambers on the grounds of a publicly funded institution run by nuns and the local council? A technical drawing from the 1970s of the council housing estate built on the grounds showed 'old children's burial ground' written directly above 'proposed playground'. Local authorities knew long ago. News first broke in 2014 after Catherine Corless, who was working on a history project, tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children for whom there were almost no burial records. She had gone to the Bon Secours Sisters, the Catholic organisation that ran the home, to the local bishop and the authorities. Little was done until she went to the media. It is a vindication of Corless's work that the exhumation is taking place, but also disturbing that it was never a certainty. I had already started writing a book about survivors of Ireland's institutions for 'unmarried mothers' when a test excavation publicly confirmed 'significant human remains' at Tuam, dating to the time the nuns ran the home, between 1925 and 1961. In 2018, the public was asked what should be done. I keep thinking of the 'talking stone', a lump of grey felt handed around a public meeting organised by Galway county council, which owned the site, in a Tuam hotel. We were asked to hold it and say what we wanted to happen about a mass grave of babies. Options ranged from memorialisation alone to the full forensic excavation happening today. While it was important to talk about it, it also felt surreal and even wrong, with some people asking why the site was not being treated as any other crime scene. One man described Tuam as 'ground zero' and begged: 'Dig those bodies up, every one of them, all over the country. Give the children some dignity.' Even if one family was able to get an answer, it was worth it. A woman from the housing estate pointed out that she had 'no right to tell a survivor you cannot identify where your brother or sister is' and hoped the children would not be left 'in a cesspit with just a plaque'. It was survivors, families and all those who wanted the truth for them who fought relentlessly against an ongoing silence from church and state. It was activists such as Izzy Kamikaze, who found an old map showing cesspools in the grounds that were known locally to have included a burial site. Bones had been found sporadically down the years. As the former Irish president Mary McAleese said about systemic abuse: 'We heard it through the media, we heard it through the courage of victims, we heard it through lawyers, we heard it through government. We never really heard it openly, spontaneously from our church.' I would say we never heard it first from those in power either, even when, in the case of the Tuam children, they had access to the information long before, from earlier investigations. At a council meeting in the 1960s, an influential politician argued against the impending closure of Tuam, saying, 'The county has the benefit of the money spent there.' I reported how a Tuam survivor fostered by the same politician spoke of abuse and exploitation for labour. She died before seeing any justice. 'Our Lord was crucified and so were the women of this country,' PJ Haverty, a Tuam survivor who first took me to the burial site, told me. 'The nuns had power, it was all about money and it was all about power.' His mother had gone to the nuns day after day trying to get her baby back. Tuam was just one in a system of institutions that operated until as recently as 2006, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth, were effectively incarcerated and, in many cases, were forcibly separated from their children: more than 50,000 mothers and more than 50,000 children. A commission of investigation, forced by the news of Tuam, began in 2015 and concluded in 2021, finding that 9,000 children had died in these 'homes'. But it called the institutions 'refuges' and dismissed survivor testimonies about the inhumanity and abuses. The official redress scheme now excludes thousands of survivors, seemingly to cut costs. In 2018, during the government press conference announcing the decision to excavate, I was told by the then children's minister Katherine Zappone that Tuam could set a precedent for other institutions. There are many families still searching for answers. There are also mass graves on the grounds of similar institutions in the UK, the US and Canada. The crimes of the Catholic church are global. At the memorial last year, Tuam survivor Peter Mulryan told me he didn't want to sign the legal waiver required for redress, under which recipients agree not to take any further action against the state about their experience, so preventing any legal justice, describing it as 'another insult to survivors'. But, at 81, he felt he had no choice and is happy others are taking the case to court. Mulryan was one of many Tuam children 'boarded out' to a farm, and he told me he was brutally exploited there, with no justice or redress. His mother was sent to the Galway Magdalene laundry for the rest of her life. Corless found a sister he never knew about, who had died at Tuam. He has spoken out for most of a decade, hoping to find her. Religious sisters did speak to me for my book, but were often silenced by superiors or after legal advice. Meanwhile, voices from within the religious right, including the president of the Catholic League in the US, have called Tuam 'a hoax', in a country where reproductive rights are rolled back and Catholic hospitals have increasing influence. The Bon Secours order is part of an international healthcare conglomerate worth billions in the US. Terry Prone, whose PR firm acted for the Bon Secours Sisters, wrote a now infamous email when the news first broke, calling it the 'O my God – mass grave in West of Ireland' story and warning a French TV journalist: 'You'll find no mass grave, no evidence that children were ever so buried.' At a reading of my book, a man repeated the hoax claim, even after public photos from the test excavation showed the slits in a huge tank, making any proper burial impossible, the blurred photos of infant bones inside, and a baby's blue shoe. Despite this, religious and political conservatives in Ireland, rallying against recent progressive changes, have even argued for bringing back such institutions. From the earliest years, the state knew that 'illegitimate' children in these institutions were dying at sometimes five times the rate of children born within marriage. Death certificates show children dying of malnutrition, or marked as 'imbecile', one boy convulsing for 12 hours before dying. The children's lives were not valued. I think of Julia Devaney, a domestic worker in Tuam, who described it in taped interviews as barracks-like, smelling of the wet beds of frightened and deprived children, while nuns treated officials from local authorities to lavish dinners on the grounds. Devaney said a nun who worked there left the Bon Secours because of what she saw. 'They knew well that the home was a queer place, 'twas a rotten place,' said Devaney. 'I feel a sense of shame that I did not create a war.' Survivors are still fighting their long battle for truth and justice, hoping similar injustices will never be repeated. I believe that even today church and state perpetuate the silences and inequalities that led to a mass grave of children. This excavation can be a reckoning, a reminder to those in power to listen to those who are owed real accountability: the survivors and the families of the many children who can no longer speak. Caelainn Hogan is an Irish journalist and the author of Republic of Shame
The Guardian
7 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Why has it taken a decade to exhume the bodies of the 800 dead babies of Tuam?
A young girl played on a swing near a mass grave as the names of hundreds of children who died in a mother-and-baby institution in Ireland were read out during a memorial service late last year. The bright day turned to dark in the time it took. Now, the playground near the site in Tuam has been dismantled and the long-awaited exhumation has begun. But why has it taken more than a decade since it emerged that those dead children were likely buried in sewage chambers on the grounds of a publicly funded institution run by nuns and the local council? A technical drawing from the 1970s of the council housing estate built on the grounds showed 'old children's burial ground' written directly above 'proposed playground'. Local authorities knew long ago. News first broke in 2014 after Catherine Corless, who was working on a history project, tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children for whom there were almost no burial records. She had gone to the Bon Secours Sisters, the Catholic organisation that ran the home, to the local bishop and the authorities. Little was done until she went to the media. It is a vindication of Corless's work that the exhumation is taking place, but also disturbing that it was never a certainty. I had already started writing a book about survivors of Ireland's institutions for 'unmarried mothers' when a test excavation publicly confirmed 'significant human remains' at Tuam, dating to the time the nuns ran the home, between 1925 and 1961. In 2018, the public was asked what should be done. I keep thinking of the 'talking stone', a lump of grey felt handed around a public meeting organised by Galway county council, which owned the site, in a Tuam hotel. We were asked to hold it and say what we wanted to happen about a mass grave of babies. Options ranged from memorialisation alone to the full forensic excavation happening today. While it was important to talk about it, it also felt surreal and even wrong, with some people asking why the site was not being treated as any other crime scene. One man described Tuam as 'ground zero' and begged: 'Dig those bodies up, every one of them, all over the country. Give the children some dignity.' Even if one family was able to get an answer, it was worth it. A woman from the housing estate pointed out that she had 'no right to tell a survivor you cannot identify where your brother or sister is' and hoped the children would not be left 'in a cesspit with just a plaque'. It was survivors, families and all those who wanted the truth for them who fought relentlessly against an ongoing silence from church and state. It was activists such as Izzy Kamikaze, who found an old map showing cesspools in the grounds that were known locally to have included a burial site. Bones had been found sporadically down the years. As the former Irish president Mary McAleese said about systemic abuse: 'We heard it through the media, we heard it through the courage of victims, we heard it through lawyers, we heard it through government. We never really heard it openly, spontaneously from our church.' I would say we never heard it first from those in power either, even when, in the case of the Tuam children, they had access to the information long before, from earlier investigations. At a council meeting in the 1960s, an influential politician argued against the impending closure of Tuam, saying, 'The county has the benefit of the money spent there.' I reported how a Tuam survivor fostered by the same politician spoke of abuse and exploitation for labour. She died before seeing any justice. 'Our Lord was crucified and so were the women of this country,' PJ Haverty, a Tuam survivor who first took me to the burial site, told me. 'The nuns had power, it was all about money and it was all about power.' His mother had gone to the nuns day after day trying to get her baby back. Tuam was just one in a system of institutions that operated until as recently as 2006, where unmarried pregnant women were sent to give birth, were effectively incarcerated and, in many cases, were forcibly separated from their children: more than 50,000 mothers and more than 50,000 children. A commission of investigation, forced by the news of Tuam, began in 2015 and concluded in 2021, finding that 9,000 children had died in these 'homes'. But it called the institutions 'refuges' and dismissed survivor testimonies about the inhumanity and abuses. The official redress scheme now excludes thousands of survivors, seemingly to cut costs. In 2018, during the government press conference announcing the decision to excavate, I was told by the then children's minister Katherine Zappone that Tuam could set a precedent for other institutions. There are many families still searching for answers. There are also mass graves on the grounds of similar institutions in the UK, the US and Canada. The crimes of the Catholic church are global. At the memorial last year, Tuam survivor Peter Mulryan told me he didn't want to sign the legal waiver required for redress, under which recipients agree not to take any further action against the state about their experience, so preventing any legal justice, describing it as 'another insult to survivors'. But, at 81, he felt he had no choice and is happy others are taking the case to court. Mulryan was one of many Tuam children 'boarded out' to a farm, and he told me he was brutally exploited there, with no justice or redress. His mother was sent to the Galway Magdalene laundry for the rest of her life. Corless found a sister he never knew about, who had died at Tuam. He has spoken out for most of a decade, hoping to find her. Religious sisters did speak to me for my book, but were often silenced by superiors or after legal advice. Meanwhile, voices from within the religious right, including the president of the Catholic League in the US, have called Tuam 'a hoax', in a country where reproductive rights are rolled back and Catholic hospitals have increasing influence. The Bon Secours order is part of an international healthcare conglomerate worth billions in the US. Terry Prone, whose PR firm acted for the Bon Secours Sisters, wrote a now infamous email when the news first broke, calling it the 'O my God – mass grave in West of Ireland' story and warning a French TV journalist: 'You'll find no mass grave, no evidence that children were ever so buried.' At a reading of my book, a man repeated the hoax claim, even after public photos from the test excavation showed the slits in a huge tank, making any proper burial impossible, the blurred photos of infant bones inside, and a baby's blue shoe. Despite this, religious and political conservatives in Ireland, rallying against recent progressive changes, have even argued for bringing back such institutions. From the earliest years, the state knew that 'illegitimate' children in these institutions were dying at sometimes five times the rate of children born within marriage. Death certificates show children dying of malnutrition, or marked as 'imbecile', one boy convulsing for 12 hours before dying. The children's lives were not valued. I think of Julia Devaney, a domestic worker in Tuam, who described it in taped interviews as barracks-like, smelling of the wet beds of frightened and deprived children, while nuns treated officials from local authorities to lavish dinners on the grounds. Devaney said a nun who worked there left the Bon Secours because of what she saw. 'They knew well that the home was a queer place, 'twas a rotten place,' said Devaney. 'I feel a sense of shame that I did not create a war.' Survivors are still fighting their long battle for truth and justice, hoping similar injustices will never be repeated. I believe that even today church and state perpetuate the silences and inequalities that led to a mass grave of children. This excavation can be a reckoning, a reminder to those in power to listen to those who are owed real accountability: the survivors and the families of the many children who can no longer speak. Caelainn Hogan is an Irish journalist and the author of Republic of Shame
The Irish Sun
15-07-2025
- Health
- The Irish Sun
Dark history of Tuam mother and baby home as 2-year dig begins to identify 800 babies in historic mass grave exhumation
THE excavation on the grounds of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home began on Monday, 100 years after it was first established in Co Galway. A team of 3 The excavation on the grounds of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home has begun 3 A team of Irish and international forensic experts are taking part in the dig Credit:3 Catherine Corless managed to trace 796 of the babies who died at the home Credit:They will try to The site, surrounded by a 2.4 metre-high hoarding, is security monitored on a 24-hour basis to ensure the forensic integrity of the site during the excavation. Daniel MacSweeney, who A visit for families and survivors to view the site ahead of the commencement of the full excavation took place last Tuesday. Read more in News Here, Emma McMenamy looks at the dark history of the Tuam mother and baby home. 1925: A former workhouse which housed destitute adults and children during the famine was converted into a mother and baby home. Despite it being owned by Many women who had children out of wedlock were sent here, one of several institutions that existed and housed those who had been ostracised by Irish society. Most read in Irish News According to research, a child from the Tuam Mother and Baby Home died every two weeks between the years of 1925 and 1961. 1961: After the building had fallen into disrepair, those who were still there were moved to other institutions and the Tuam Mother and Baby Home officially closed its doors. Tuam mother and baby home: Catherine Corless's research revealed that 796 children died at St Mary's in Galway 1972: Work begins on a new council-owned housing estate in the area of the now demolished mother and baby home. 1975: While playing near the site of the old home, two 12-year-old boys discover skeletal remains in a concrete structure. Locals assume they are remains from a famine grave and call for a priest to bless the site before it is re-sealed. Locals believe it is an old burial site and erect a memorial garden and shrine to mark the area. 'VERY HIGH INFANT MORTALITY RATE' 2012: But she also asks the question why there are no records of where the Tuam babies who died at the home were buried. 2013: A year later Ms Corless goes about collating the death certificates of a staggering 798 children who died at the home. She managed to trace 796. CAMPAIGN CALL 2014: In February, the regional newspaper, The Connacht Tribune, publishes an interview with Ms Corless about her campaign for a permanent memorial for the babies who died at the Tuam home to include a plaque which would display all 796 infant names. Two months later, Mail on Sunday journalist Alison O'Reilly published a story claiming that up to 800 bodies could be buried at the site and the article gains massive international attention. By June, just a few months after the initial interview with Ms Corless about the Tuam babies, the Government announce that it is setting up a nationwide commission of investigation into Ireland's mother and baby homes. 2015: The commission panel is asked to examine the living conditions in the homes as well as the mortality rates, causes of death and burial arrangements. TEST DIGS BEGIN 2016: Test excavations at the site begin as part of the commission of investigation. 2018: Ms Corless is among those honoured at Ireland's People of the Year Awards. Minister for Children Katherine Zappone announces plans for a forensic excavation of the Tuam site. 2019: Four years after being established, the commission outlines its conclusions on burial arrangements at the homes in its fifth interim report and states that a total of 802 children died inside the Tuam Mother and Baby Home while it was open, as well as 12 mothers. 'OPEN TO CHALLENGE' 2020: President 2021: The final report of the commission's findings are published and it concludes that about 9,000 children died in the 18 institutions under investigation and it makes 53 recommendations including In response to the report, the Bon Secours offer their 'profound apologies 'to all the women and children who lived at the Tuam home. The then-Taoiseach 2022: The Irish government agreed draft legislation to excavate the Tuam site. 2025: Excavation finally begins at the Tuam Mother and Baby home site.
Irish Examiner
15-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Troubled Ground: The story of the excavation of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home
Troubled Ground is a two-part podcast that explores the historic exhumation of a mass grave at the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, involving the remains of 796 infants and children. In Episode 1, reporter Alison O'Reilly meets local historian Catherine Corless, who first uncovered the existence of the burial site and whose research ultimately led to the excavation. Forensic experts describe the painstaking process of examining the site in search of lost remains. The episode revisits the origins of the Tuam Babies story, beginning in 2014 with Catherine Corless's research into the deaths of hundreds of children at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Anna Corrigan shares the devastating discovery that her mother had two sons who died in the home. Despite initial indifference from the media, the story gained traction on the global stage. As international attention mounted, political leaders were compelled to respond, including the Taoiseach of the day, Enda Kenny. The episode captures how a local investigation into a burial ground for forgotten children led to the first mass grave exhumation of its kind in Ireland. To hear more compelling journalism from the Irish Examiner team, follow The Full Story podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Read More Alison O'Reilly: It took a global spotlight for many to accept hundreds of babies are buried in a septic tank in Tuam
BBC News
15-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
The Interview Catherine Corless, Irish historian: I'm going to be a voice for these children
I'm going to be a voice for these children Chris Page, the BBC's Ireland correspondent speaks to the Irish historian Catherine Corless, who has changed history in her own country. When she began to research a long-closed mother and baby home near where she lived, she encountered local resistance. But her dogged investigation led to the discovery that hundreds of babies and young children were buried in mass, unmarked graves inside a disused sewage tank at the site in Tuam, Ireland. Her work led to the discovery of the scandal of Ireland's historical mother and baby institutions, which housed unmarried mothers and their babies at a time when they were ostracized by Irish society and often their families too. An inquiry launched by the Irish government into the network of homes concluded about nine thousand children died in the eighteen homes investigated. The revelation led to apologies from the Catholic Church in Ireland, the Irish Government, the council which owned the home in Tuam and the religious order which ran the home. The order has also contributed millions of dollars to a compensation scheme, and to the excavation now underway in Tuam. Thank you to Chris Page and Chrissie McGlinchey from the BBC's Ireland bureau for their help in making this programme. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC. You can listen on the BBC World Service, Mondays and Wednesdays at 0700 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out twice a week on BBC Sounds, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Presenter: Chris Page Producers: Lucy Sheppard and Chrissie McGlinchey Editor: Nick Holland Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@ and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media. (Image: Catherine Corless. Credit: PA)
