They stood together in an Irish town

The Tuam Home survivors stand together in solidarity on Sunday

They stood together, side-by-side, in solidarity in the heart of an Irish town.

Their hearts beating loudly, but their heads held high.

These were once the marginalised, the forgotten ones, the ones who were never supposed to speak out, express their pain, or make much of their lives.

As children, they were called the ‘Home Babies’.

Or . . . the children of the ‘fallen women’.

Or . . . the illegitimate ones.

Or . . . appallingly, the bastards.

Bastards –  the disgusting word of choice of a judgmental society, which allowed the imprisonment of innocent women and children to go on for decades.

There were thousands of children like them all around Ireland, malnourished, tearful, forced to march to school in hobnailed boots; forced to arrive later than the luckier ones who were considered “legitimate” in the eyes of a Church and a State which never cared much for their welfare.

There but for the grace of a God who didn’t show much concern for them in the first few years of their lives.

They could have been adopted to America, illegally, to "good" Catholic families who were able and willing to pay the right price.

They could have been farmed out to “respectable” Irish families, some of whom were quick to remind them of their true place in this earth and their lowly station in life.

Abuse did not always end in the confines of those homes.

Or, God forbid, they might have lived just a matter of days or months, and found themselves dumped in a mass grave in a septic tank.

These were people who were never meant to make it onto our TV screens or into our newspapers, but thanks to the tireless research of a brave historian called Catherine Corless we are now getting to know their stories and their names.

They stood together in the heart of Tuam on Sunday afternoon and tears were shed as they began their silent, dignified walk through town.

Locals placed baby shoes along the route of the vigil

People like Peter, who expressed his anguish to a small group of us in a Galway graveyard last year.

At 70 years of age, he found out about the little sister he never knew he had. He’s 74 now and only a disgusting, morally bankrupt Church or State would dare to deny him access to justice and the truth about what happened to his younger sibling.

People like Annette, whose older sister, Mary Margaret O’Connor, died as a child in the home in 1943. Annette, who lives in Manchester, England, described it as an “obscenity” that the site was not being excavated in order to provide closure and the truth to the families.

“I don’t know a country that would put 796 babies in a disused sewage tank. Those babies aren’t hidden, they are in that septic tank and they need to be given back to their families,” she said.

People like Anna, who only discovered she had two older brothers after he mother’s death in Dublin.

“The Tuam grave is a jigsaw and it needs to be put together,” she said.

How can any of us imagine the emotions Anna went through when it began to dawn on her that her brothers could have been buried in a septic tank on the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home?

How can any of us imagine how they and other family members feel when they see that part of the site is now a children’s playground in a Council estate in the North Galway town?

As though the authorities really went out of their way to cover up and forget the horror of what happened at that site.

How can any of us imagine what they go through every day when the Irish authorities fail to comply with their absolute conviction that there should be a complete and thorough exhumation of the site?

Can we even begin to imagine what it’s like to believe you have a close member dumped among 796 children in a mass grave in a septic tank?

If all of those family members are even there at all, because many Irish campaigners now believe that dozens of the “home babies” were adopted by families in the United States.

Calling out the names of the 796 'Tuam Babies' in Tuam

While Pope Francis was appearing before thousands of Irish people at a Mass in the Phoenix Park on Sunday, these amazing survivors came together in the heart of Tuam.

The hundreds who turned out to support them were moved into a sustained and dignified round of applause after their silent vigil through the town.

They read out the names of all 796 'Tuam Babies', one-by-one.

Local people hung children’s toys along the route to show their support to the survivors and to remind participants of the terrible, brutal injustice which occurred at the site.

While the visit of Pope Francis was expected to cost €32 million, these families are waiting on tenterhooks to see if the Irish authorities will come up with the funding required for the full exhumation of the site.

Baby shoes at the site of the mass grave in Tuam 

Local people tied baby shoes, toys, and teddy bears to railings all along the route to express solidarity to the families, the survivors, and the 796 children whose names were read out at a simple, but poignant, ceremony.

Now that Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland has concluded, the Tuam Home Survivors Network have called on the Irish Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, to convene an Inquest and complete a full exhumation of the site.

They want her to show them what correspondence, if any, she has had with the Bon Secours order who ran the infamous home from 1925 to 1961.

The Bon Secours order has refused to engage with the survivors and the families and even hired a PR person to try to 'spin' their role in this terrible affair.

Minister Zappone wrote a letter to Pope Francis on Monday, calling on the Vatican to contribute €2.5 million as part reparation for its role in the scandal of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

The families read her letter with interest, but released a statement claiming that the letter “smacks of a stunt, a desperate attempt by a Minister completely out of her depth”.

Their anger has not disappeared.

Izzy and Sadie declare the site a crime scene on Sunday

Two activists who have campaigned for justice for the ‘Tuam Babies’, Izzy Kamikaze and Sadie Cramer, cordoned off the site with tape on Sunday and declared it a crime scene. They said they were sickened that the Irish authorities had not carried out a full investigation at the site.

Catherine Corless, Izzy, Sadie, the families, and the survivors all came together in the heart of the North Galway town this weekend and they won’t be silenced any more.

Perhaps that, more than anything, will be the legacy of Pope Francis’ 2018 visit to Ireland. The whole world has been alerted to and shocked by the crimes committed against Irish women and children and their subsequent cover-up.

The loved-ones of the 796 have found their voices and they are determined to find out the truth now, no matter what barriers they face from the Church or State authorities, or the concerns expressed about the cost involved.

Because, thanks to the overwhelming support and solidarity of ordinary Irish people, all of their shame has gone.

Their search for justice goes on.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia/

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Pope Francis and the long lost innocence of the Irish

Protests are planned for the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland this month

In far more innocent times, as children, we got up at the crack of dawn. I remember the excitement in the family home, as we arose and prepared for the biggest and most symbolic walk of our young lives. I still recall the folded deck chairs, the home-made sandwiches and flasks of tea, the yellow and white flags.

At the house, the looks of envy on the faces of the younger siblings and the two grandmothers, who were not old enough or able to join the mass exodus on foot to the racecourse on the other side of the city.

We met up with the cousins, seeing the sense of adventure in their eyes, and the adults around us gave us a sense of what a huge moment this was in our shared history.

There were thousands upon thousands at the racecourse, corralled into zones at the biggest event I had ever seen. This was bigger, even, than an All-Ireland final and a ripple of excitement went through the crowd as the helicopter landed near the grandstand.

And, then, the immortal words . . .

“Young people of Ireland, I love you!”

This was Ballybrit, Galway, in 1979. It felt like a moment of triumph for Catholic Ireland and I could see its significance in the eyes of my parents as they told me how wonderful it was that Pope John Paul II had come to our town.

Our generation of children even became known as the “Pope’s children” after that day in Ballybrit but, looking back almost four decades on, it now looks like the end of an era rather than the start of something wonderful and new.

It actually seems unbelievable now that 79% of the Irish people went along to welcome Pope John Paul II to our land 39 years ago.

Up on the altar in Galway, Pope John Paul II was flanked by two Irish clerics, Bishop Eamonn Casey and Fr Michael Cleary, both of whom it would later transpire had fathered children in the years prior to that memorable day in Galway.

As many people have pointed out since, their indiscretions paled into significance in the context of so much criminal abuse which has been uncovered in recent years.

So much has changed.

It dawns on me now that my family and I walked past the Magdalene Laundry in Galway in order to make our way to Ballybrit to hear the pontiff express his love for us. Only nobody ever talked about the young women who were incarcerated inside, washing the bed linen for the “great and the good” of our city.

As children, we never heard anything about the 10,000 women and girls who were locked up in Magdalene Laundries across Ireland from 1922 to 1996. Yes, it’s still shocking to think that these prisons for “fallen women” remained in place until well into the 1990s.

It dawns on me now, too, that so many of my generation were being abused at the time of the last papal visit, because nobody questioned those in authority and certainly not members of the Catholic Church who had so much control over our daily lives.

In any Irish family, it was considered an honour to be an altar-boy. In 1979, if a young woman became pregnant outside marriage a priest could still arrive at the front door of the family home to whisk her away to a life of imprisonment. Such was the shame.

We did not question those in authority and we had never even heard of child abuse or peadophilia in 1979.

A beautiful tribute to the 'Tuam Babies' in Galway.
What a pity the Bon  Secours have never faced up to this terrible wrong

It dawns on me now that it would take another 35 years before we heard about the 796 ‘Tuam Babies’, dumped in unmarked graves less than an hour up the road from where the Pontiff expressed his love for all the young people of Ireland in Galway.

We were never told about the women and children who were imprisoned in that now notorious Tuam home until 1961. I guess the lives of those children didn’t matter because they were ‘guilty’ of being born outside marriage in a far more judgmental Ireland.

As Ireland prepares to welcome Pope Francis next week, it dawns on me now that the Church he leads has done so much harm to my people, destroyed so many lives, and that so little has been done to make amends.

Doubtless, there were children in Ballybrit that afternoon who are no longer with us, because the pain and trauma of what they endured at the hands of the Irish clergy was far too much to endure. For many, death and self-destruction was the only answer to the pain.

So many Irish families were torn apart by clerical abuse, their pain magnified by the response of church authorities who moved abusers around from one parish or part of the country to another rather than helping to find justice for the victims.

So many people were labelled as “illegitimate” or less than human, so many young mothers had children taken from them against their will, perhaps for adoption by “good Catholic families” in the United States, because unmarried mothers were too stigmatised to be allowed bring them up here in Ireland.

So many of us now see the Catholic Church as an international organisation which ignored, facilitated, and covered up the abuse of Irish children that it’s hard to imagine how enthusiastically we welcomed a former Pontiff back in 1979.

Were we really so innocent? So naive? Did people really have no idea that such terrible crimes were taking place at the time?

We now know that a comprehensive report found that the church authorities responded to clerical abuse with “denial, arrogance, and cover-up” nine years ago.

In the interim, what has changed? Why won't Pope Francis meet the victims and acknowledge how much pain his church has caused to generations of Irish people?

Catherine Corless: she uncovered the truth about the 'Tuam Babies'
despite the best efforts of the Catholic Church

We now know that the Bon Secours order stonewalled or ignored the victims and families of the “Tuam Babies” when they sought the truth or some semblance of justice for their 796 loved-ones.

They are still refusing to engage with the families in 2018, a year after the research of historian Catherine Corless has been completely vindicated by the Irish Government.

We know that up to 140 Irish children were abused by just one priest in Northern Ireland, Fr Brendan Smyth, who was free to travel throughout the land (and continue to abuse) even though the most senior cleric in Ireland was aware of allegations against him.

Had action been taken, how many shattered lives might have been saved?

Preparing for the Pope's visit in Dublin

We have found out about so many shocking cases of abuse, cover-up, and denial involving Irish women, children, and men at the hands of members of the Roman Catholic Church that it seems we cannot be shocked any more.

It’s because of the clear litany of scandals they have endured that Irish people have changed immeasurably since 1979. In the intervening years we have legalised homosexuality, divorce, marriage equality, and abortion, despite strong opposition from a church which seemed to dominate all aspects of our lives back then.

Now people want the Catholic Church to be removed from our schools and hospitals and they want full and meaningful apologies for all the hurt caused and lives destroyed.

When Pope Francis speaks to thousands of people in the Phoenix Park in Dublin on Sunday, August 26, hundreds of others will assemble at silent vigils in places such as Tuam and Dublin.

All they want is acknowledgement of the truth and the terrible damage caused to so many innocent Irish people by the Roman Catholic Church.

As a child, I took part in the longest walk of my young life to see Pope John Paul II in 1979. Like so many others, I was innocent, joyful, and enthusiastic that the head of our global church proclaimed his love for me and all the young children of Ireland.

Almost four decades on, all that innocence has died. I would far prefer to attend one of the protests, to stand side-by-side with the amazing victims, than celebrate the visit of the figurehead of an international organisation which has always seemed far more interested in protecting its own power than the welfare of Irish children.

The innocent victims have found their voices and Pope Francis is missing out on a powerful opportunity to atone for a terrible past if he refuses to meet them, hear their stories, and apologise.

Those of us who are of a certain age may have walked in our thousands to Dublin, Galway, Knock and Drogheda in 1979, but Ireland is a very different place right now and people are no longer willing to accept the blatant abuse of power.

Decades of abuse and cover-ups won’t be wiped out by protests, but it is so important that Pope Francis and the entire Catholic Church is reminded of the damage done.

Those who have been abused will stand together in solidarity at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin on Sunday, August 26, and at the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.

That to me will be a far more powerful ceremony than trying to regain the long lost innocence of 1979 and a ‘Catholic’ Ireland which has long since vanished.


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Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

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Remember the 796 'Tuam Babies' and how difficult it is
for their families to find justice in 2018. 

Palestine, politicians, and the passion of ordinary Irish people

A little boy flies a Palestinian flag at a demonstration in Galway
Photo courtesy of Skye McKee.

Of all the countries in Europe, Palestinians seem to have a special place in their hearts for the people of Ireland.

It was etched into the faces of the young footballers from Gaza when they were guests of honour at a game between Galway United and Dundalk FC two years ago.

What kind of country, they wondered, would allow them to take pride of place on the pitch before a big game featuring the league champions, mingle with the crowd, and even meet the President of Ireland afterwards?

The things that childhood dreams were made of, as they represented their country, their people, with such pride.

There were tears in their eyes when the entire main stand rose to its feet to chant “Stand up for the Gaza boys!” in the second half of an exciting game.

They were made to feel so special.

It was clear from the pride of their coaches when they spent a day in Kinvara. The small rural community had boycotted Israeli goods while the tiny place where they live was being bombed to bits, causing the deaths of 2,250 people, in 2014.

The Al-Helal boys went to Kinvara, thrashed the local Irish teams, dazzling us with their skills, and were overwhelmed by the generosity of spirit of the local club who arranged for a community circus to perform for them.

These were ordinary people, showing extraordinary care for the members of a football club whose home ground has been bombed twice and whose underage players have experienced so much trauma and conflict in their short lives.

For the most part, they are locked into a little place, which is home to 1.9 million people despite being smaller than Co Louth. The kind of trip which Irish children of the same age take for granted became an extraordinary adventure and a celebration of the ties which bind youngsters who love a game of football together.

Their simple love for the beautiful game and pride in representing their communities transcended the language barrier.

John Griffin of Kinvara presents a Book of Condolences
to the Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland. Photo; Ciaran Tierney

This extraordinary love for Ireland was etched in the broad smile on the face of the Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland, Ahmad Abdelrazek, when he visited Kinvara last weekend. He was overwhelmed that almost an entire village seemed to turn out for a talk about Palestine on a sunny summer’s evening.

On a poignant occasion, when the people of KInvara handed over a Book of Condolences for those who had died in the recent massacre in Gaza, he smiled as he recalled the “secret missions” he has undertaken to Kinvara over the past four years.

He told the villagers how, unannounced and with no fanfare, he often brought international visitors to the South Galway village over the past four years.

His mission was to show them the place which organised a community-wide boycott of Israeli products in response to the sustained Israeli bombing of Gaza, one of the most crowded places on earth, in 2014.

All of them were taken aback by the compassion the people of the village had shown to those living under a brutal siege hundreds of miles away in Palestine.

It was clear from the happy response from the international human rights lawyer from Ramallah upon his arrival at Dublin Airport last month.

What was the purpose of his trip, the customs officer wanted to know.

“I am visiting my second home,” came the delighted man’s reply.

“Oh, do you have a home here?” asked the startled customs officer.

No, he replied. But he had always felt that Ireland was his second home since he studied human rights here for a year in 2005. Even after a travel ban prevented him from picking up a ‘Student of the Decade’ award nine years ago.

The customs offer laughed and gave him a warm welcome back to the land he referred to as his second home.

With Senator Frances Black and the Palestinian Ambassador
during a talk about Palestine in Kinvara, Co Galway, last month

It was etched in the faces of the people when I visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan a decade ago. As the only Irish person in a small group of foreign visitors, I was singled out for attention. They all wanted to meet and greet the Irish man.

I was almost embarrassed by the attention. Once they heard I was Irish, the locals gave me a particularly warm welcome.

Almost every Palestinian person I have met has told me about this deep love for Ireland.

They know about our history, our story of colonisation and being treated as second class citizens in our own land.

They know about plantations, people being displaced from their land, and how it took so long for the Irish to see their liberation. As their own ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe, enters its 71st year they are moved by our story and inspired by the way our people resisted occupation.

They see the Irish as a shining light, an example of what they can achieve.

And sometimes it’s embarrassing when you try to explain to them that our politicians don’t always reflect the wishes of the people.

Young footballers from Gaza who love coming to Ireland

People like those in the tiny community of Kinvara who packed the town hall on a sunny Friday night to talk about Palestine.

People like the families who host their young footballers free of charge and the activists who go through so much bureaucracy to make sure the best of their footballing youngsters can live out their dreams by witnessing the green of Ireland.

By playing our best players, by enjoying the peace and quiet of places like Kinvara, or the joys of a circus in a rural field, the kinds of things our own youngsters take for granted, the Irish give them a glimpse of how good life can be.

You are almost embarrassed to tell them that our politicians are afraid of voting for a bill this month which would implement international law in Ireland.

Over the past few weeks, Senator Frances Black (Independent) has been travelling the country to tell small communities about her Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban goods from illegal Israeli settlements from Ireland.

When she explains the settlements at talks in Irish towns and cities – the fact that more than 500,000 people live on stolen land, beyond recognised international borders – she is overwhelmed by the support of ordinary Irish people.

Gaza footballers in Galway. Photo: Andrew Downes

When she talks passionately about the daily humiliations and harassments she has seen in the West Bank, people are angry and sad.

They want to do anything they can to help the children of Palestine.

If it means passing a bill which merely makes international law the law of this land, they see no issue with it. In fact, they are proud that our land could set a precedent for others.

They understand what it would mean to the people of the West Bank. They agree with Senator Black, that it’s time to make sure these goods and services from illegal settlements, considered war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, do not end up on the shelves of Irish stores and supermarkets.

It might be a small thing, but it would send out a powerful signal across the globe.

Senior members of Fianna Fail visited the West Bank just last week to see the hardships imposed on people living under a brutal occupation for themselves.

All week, Irish people have been emailing and calling their politicians to express their support for this bill.

Of course, there are pressing issues which need to be dealt with here in Ireland, including the homelessness crisis and shortcomings in the provision of health care.

But the Irish people have never forgotten where they came from or that their voice can be a powerful one on the world stage.

Senator Black has given up on the Government, who she believes are too in thrall of their European masters to put international law into the laws of our own land.

But imagine, just imagine, the boost it would give to ordinary Palestinians facing daily humiliations at checkpoints across the West Bank if the Irish actually took the lead rather than wait for instructions from our European ‘masters’.

The prospect of any lasting peace, or ‘two state’ solution, is being erased with every new settlement built on occupied land.

The Gaza kids with the Galway United FC mascot
Photo: Sean Ryan. 

Years ago, a small group of women in a Dublin branch of Dunnes Stores made headlines when they refused to handle goods from South Africa at the height of the Apartheid regime.

Their bravery was instrumental in bringing about the downfall of a repressive, deeply unjust regime. It was no surprise when President Nelson Mandela sought them out, ahead of our leading politicians, when he made a visit to Ireland.

People don’t want to hear about trade deals or taking advice from our European leaders while land is being gobbled up by settlers in the West Bank and people in Gaza are trapped in what has been described as an open air prison.

On July 11, Ireland can set an example for countries all across the globe, but it will take courage from our political leaders.

All they have to do is show their support for international law by voting for a bill which finally would show the people of Palestine that our green little island deserves the special place they seem to hold for it in all of their hearts.

Maybe then we actually will deserve the adulation which a people who have suffered so much seem to reserve for this former colony on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

* UPDATE: Within 24 hours of this blog being written, the Fianna Fail party announced tonight (Tuesday) that they have decided to support Senator Black's bill on July 11. This is a hugely significant development and means that Ireland should become the first country in Europe to ban 'settlement' goods next Wednesday. What a powerful statement that will be from a small country which is aiming to take a place on the UN Security Council. Solidarity with a small country and leading the way in terms of turning international human rights law into national legislation could set a shining example for small nations across the globe. 

Find out more about Senator Black's bill at http://www.sadaka.ie/




Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Hire a digital journalist or blogger at http://ciarantierney.com

Victims vow to protest when Pope Francis visits Ireland

Catherine Corless' brave research told the world about
the scandal of the 796 'Tuam Babies'

The only surprise about the revelation that survivors of institutions and clerical sex abuse are planning to protest during the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland in August is that anybody might be surprised.

There are thousands of people across Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Canada who are waking up to the injustice inflicted upon them and their families. They are determined not to be silenced anymore.

They want the Catholic Church to face up to the abuse inflicted on young mothers and their children in both Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes throughout much of the 20th century. As far as many of them are concerned, the religious orders have never faced up to their crimes.

All across Ireland, hundreds of people believe they may have uncles, aunts, brothers, or sisters scattered across the globe.

They believe they have close relatives in cities such as Boston, Chicago, or New York who have no idea of their own true identities, as they were adopted out, illegally and for cash, by nuns whose only concern was that they ended up in good Catholic homes.

The history of Catholic institutions in Ireland in the 20th century is one of physical and emotional abuse, shame, judgement, and even baby trafficking and child abduction, as many “illegitimate” children were forcibly taken from their traumatised mothers after they were transferred to institutions all across the country. 

This is not ancient history, as we saw in the emotional but wonderful scenes in Dublin two weeks ago when more than 200 former residents of Magdalene Laundries were honoured in public for the first time. 

Many of them flew home from the US and the UK, because the shame of their incarceration – or giving birth outside marriage – ensured they could never return to the towns or villages they came from.

The last Magdalene Laundry only closed down in 1996. Some of the women were so institutionalised after spending three decades in these harsh institutions that they did not wish to leave even when presented with the opportunity to do so. They had given up the will to live independent lives.

The youngest woman to have given birth in a laundry is still only 40 years old. These are real, living, breathing people and now they want the truth – and justice – after so many years of secrets, lies, and shame.

The children born in these horrible places did not all end up living in Ireland. They were trafficked in their hundreds to the USA, their birth records falsified, and to this day many do not even realise that they were adopted or born in Ireland.                                     

When we talk about the 796 ‘Tuam Babies’ we should remember that they are not just skeletons buried in and around a septic tank in a North Galway Mother and Baby Home.

They are the flesh and blood of people like Peter Mulryan, a noble man in his 70s who wants to know what became of the little sister he never knew he had for most of his adult life. 

Until he finds proof of her death, for all he knows Peter’s younger sibling could be living out her life somewhere in North America, totally oblivious to her roots or where she came from.

This need to know the truth seems to be of hugely important to the survivors and their children as they reach old age.  Who would not want to know what happened to a sibling if he or she was forcibly removed from a tearful mother’s arms? 

Even if they knew nothing about them for most of their lives.

Birth records were falsified, an order which ran a notorious Mother and Baby home is now making money from private health care, and religious orders are refusing to hand over records until they receive legal indemnity for crimes committed in the past.

Institutions circumvented the rules to send children out for adoption and priests were moved around from one parish to another when ordinary people raised concerns about clerical sex abuse. For many victims and their families, peace will only come when they hear full apologies and they receive redress for the crimes which destroyed so many lives.

'My Name Is Bridget' is an important new book which
looks at the search for justice and truth by the families

Most of all, people just want to hear the truth. 

It’s a theme which recurs again and again in ‘My Name is Bridget’, the new book by journalist Alison O’Reilly which examines the desperately sad case of a woman who had two sons taken from her in the Mother and Baby Home.

Bridget went on to live in Dublin, marry a good man, and have a daughter who never knew about the two older siblings who were seized from her mother in Tuam. It was only after Bridget died that Anna discovered she had two missing brothers, who may or may not be buried in that infamous septic tank in Co Galway.

Right now, Anna, Peter, and other survivors of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home are waiting on tenterhooks to see if Galway County Council are prepared to undertake a full excavation and examination of the Tuam site. 

They will be shocked and dismayed if they authorities try in any way to cover up what happened in Tuam after all the pain they endured. Decades may have passed, but they are still entitled to find out what happened to close family members – were they buried in an unmarked grave or were they trafficked to America?

“This is a national scandal, not a popularity contest for who wants the tidiest cover-up. This can’t be the same as in the 1970s. How dare you,” wrote Anna in a letter to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone.

She sent copies of the letter to every member of Galway County Council to make it clear that she and other family members would not accept any kind of ‘cover up’ at the site.

Alison’s book is a very topical addition to the national debate. It shows how important identity is to the adopted and the truth is to survivors of institutions and their families.

In a powerful chapter at the end of her book, entitled Snapshots of Stolen Lives, Alison spoke to a number of survivors about their need to find the truth, justice, and peace.

Honouring the Tuam Babies at a beautiful ceremony in Galway. 

“Everyone deserves to know who they are and it should not have taken this long and I should never have had to fight so hard,” said Breda Tuite, who was adopted through the St Patrick’s Guild Agency in Dublin in 1959. 

It took Breda, from Dublin, years to track down her late mother from Co Kerry. For her, there was a kind of healing in visiting her grave and meeting her friends and family.

Sharon McGuigan was just 16-years old, an innocent child, and had been groomed by an older man when she became pregnant in 1985. She was admitted to the Dunboyne Mother and Baby Home in County Meath and gave birth to a daughter in February 1986. 

The daughter was taken from her and adopted. Sharon had no say in the matter. Her daughter is still not ready to meet her but Sharon hopes to build a relationship with her some day.

“We should not have been made to feel so shamed and to be cast aside,” Sharon told Alison O’Reilly. “I just want to tell my story and not to be mistreated because of something that wasn’t my fault. I want an acknowledgement of what happened to women like me.”

Anna Corrigan has described the Tuam grave as a jigsaw which needs to be put back together.

The survivors and their families point out that there were many institutions like Tuam all over Ireland and an awful lot of healing still has to take place for those who had no voice for far too long.

They believe that religious orders were engaged in criminal behaviour during the darkest days of 20th century Ireland and it is time the Catholic Church faces up to issues such as the shaming of pregnant women, child abductions, and the trafficking of Irish babies to the USA.

They believe that the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland will be a pivotal moment for the Catholic Church on the island.

If he listens to the people who had their identities stolen or who were separated from their families, a huge amount of healing can occur in August. 

Otherwise, Pope Francis can expect very vocal – and hugely embarrassing - protests from victims who are not prepared to be silenced any more. 

 * 'My Name is Bridget' by Alison O'Reilly is available in all good bookshops now. http://www.gillbooks.ie/


Read my recent feature for Irish Central about Rachel Robinson, the quiet-spoken woman who set up the Solidarity for the Magdalenes page on Facebook: https://www.irishcentral.com/news/magdalene-survivors-support

To hire a journalist, blogger, or digital storyteller, contact Ciaran Tierney via his website, http://ciarantierney.com/

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Peter Mulryan at his mother's grave in Galway
Photo: Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller

Nobody could have imagined how much Ireland has changed

For a country which used to lock single mothers up in laundries for the ‘crime’ of having children right up until the 1980s, Ireland has utterly changed.

A country which branded a woman who became pregnant for a second time as a “repeat offender” seems to belong to a different planet from the Republic which voted overwhelmingly in favour of abortion rights on Friday.

Gone are the days when children were taken from their mothers in Mother and Baby Homes throughout the country, in some cases to be adopted by “good” Catholic families in the United States, perhaps illegally and certainly against the wishes of the heartbroken women.

In many cases, Gardai, priests, or family members had transferred the young women to those bleak homes, because the shame of having a baby outside marriage was too much to share with neighbours or friends. Those women just “disappeared”.

For those of us who were too young to vote on the Eighth Amendment in 1983, which gave equal rights to the mother and the unborn child, the scale of the change has been unthinkable.

No woman under the age of 53 had a vote on Ireland’s strict abortion laws prior to last Friday and few could have envisaged the scale of the desire for change, with 1,429,981 people (or 66.4% of the electorate) voting in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment.

When the Eighth Amendment was passed 35 years ago, homosexuality, divorce, and even contraception were illegal, and young mothers were still incarcerated in the infamous Magdalene Laundries throughout the country.

At the end of a heated and divisive campaign, which included interference from anti-abortion groups in the United States, few could have predicted the massive desire for change across the country which emerged in Friday’s vote.

Campaigners could hardly have believed the extent of support for repeal, given how divisive and emotional the issue of abortion has been in Ireland for decades.

And yet it was evident all around us, in social media posts and in conversations with friends, if we dared to believe.

My friend Eimear, for example, flew home from Vietnam to vote.

A work colleague’s friend flew in from Canada for a short, but emotional, trip home. Her friends raised the money for her flight through a crowdfunding website.

The issue meant so much to them, and to so many other young Irish women scattered across the globe, that the arrivals area of Dublin Airport was transformed into an emotional meeting point in the days leading up to the vote.

Young women arriving on flights from cities such as London, Liverpool, Toronto, and Brussels, were greeted by a lady with a huge box of Tayto crisps, who went out to the airport just to hand them out to the exiles and give them a warm welcome home.

There were emotional hugs and tears shed at the airport, as many noted the contrast with the silent journeys which so many Irish women have made to the UK and other countries over the past 35 years.

Nine women make the journey in the opposite direction every day. A hospital in Liverpool has a special section for Irish women with fatal foetal abnormalities, whose babies were going to die but the women could not get terminations in their own land.

Another friend Jennie was in terror at the prospect of canvassing when I met her at the launch of Together for Yes in Galway at the start of the campaign.

She was weighing up whether or not she had the strength to go around to people’s houses and knock on doors.

She had moved to a new town, where the cost of housing was cheaper, just two years ago and worried about the kind of reception she and other canvassers would receive.

Instead, she discovered a fabulous reception on the doorsteps, where ordinary rural people showed genuine compassion for women with fatal foetal abnormalities who were forced to travel to the UK for terminations in recent years.

Many wanted to listen to, and share, stories of heartbreak and trauma.

Other young women I know went out and canvassed in Galway every night. It was remarkable to note how many of them were truly engaging with politics for the first time.

But none of them dared to imagine the extent of the ‘Yes’ vote as many people were too shy to reveal how they would vote on such a personal issue when they talked to them at their doorsteps.

It now seems that those who were unwilling to reveal how they intended to vote on the doorsteps had actually made up their minds to vote ‘Yes’, despite the urgings of the Catholic Church and those who described themselves as ‘pro-life’.

As news of the landslide win came through on Saturday, tears were shed at count centres throughout the country.

At the Galway West count, I met women who had canvassed tirelessly to Repeal of the Eighth amendment over the past 35 years.

One woman in her early 50s hugged her mother, now in her 80s, who had campaigned against the Eighth Amendment back in 1983. Back then, activists had warned that the legislation would pose a threat to women’s lives. In Galway, sadly, and elsewhere they were proved right.

Many women in the hall had been waiting for this moment for all of their adult lives.

It is not as though Irish people have suddenly become “baby killers”, as depicted  with such hostility by the no side, but real stories such as that of Arlette Lyons, who founded Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR), forced us to look again at our restrictive laws.

Heartbroken, after being given a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality, Arlette and her husband had to travel to Liverpool Women’s Hospital for a termination. She was so traumatised by the experience that she took the boat because she could not face the flight home to Ireland.

On Saturday, as the result of the landslide vote came in, Arlette tweeted that the women of Ireland could now seek care in a safer, kinder country. The result would now allow her to let her little Skye rest in peace.

People talked again about the infamous 1992 ‘X Case’, in which the Irish authorities took out an injunction to prevent a teenage rape victim from travelling to the UK after her parents had alerted the Gardai to their plans.

The direct intervention by the Attorney General, which created headlines across the globe, was a direct result of the Eighth Amendment which said that the unborn child had a right to life which was equal to that of the traumatised girl.

My city is also the one in which an Indian woman, Savita Halappanavar, died in a public hospital after her plea for a termination was turned down.

People all over the world were shocked when she was told “This is a Catholic country” as she pleaded for a termination which could have saved her life.

Her death led to a huge outpouring of grief, a beautiful candelight vigil in the centre of Galway, and gave huge impetus to the campaign to change Ireland’s abortion laws.

A beautiful memorial to Savita has been constructed on a Dublin street in recent days and her parents have expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the vote.

If anything, the landslide in favour of abortion rights has shown a massive disconnect between modern Ireland and some parts of the Irish-American diaspora.

Many Americans flew in to Ireland to campaign for a ‘No’ vote and funds from the United States were poured into the losing side.

Some ‘pro-choice’ campaigners, particularly women with fatal foetal abnormalities who had undergone terminations in the UK, were shocked and dismayed by the abuse they received from social media trolls in the United States.

Modern Ireland has not suddenly become a land of “baby killers” and “murderers” as depicted by the other side, but the real stories of heartbreak and suffering expressed by Irish women for the first time showed compassion and care for women trumped the ideology of the Catholic Church in a way which would have been unthinkable in the 1980s.

The two-thirds majority comes at the end of three decades of campaigning by Irish women, who faced the wrath of Irish priests, politicians, and ‘pro-life’ campaigners throughout.

Ultimately, it was the personal tales of heartbreak and personal tragedies which prompted a significant majority of Irish voters to vote in a way which would have been unthinkable just a decade or two ago.

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, travel writer, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. http://ciarantierney.com/

Find Ciaran Tierney on Facebook http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Farewell to the land of shame

Laying flowers for the Magdalenes in Galway

It can be very empowering when the marginalised, the denigrated, and the shamed overcome their fear and find their voices.

In a quiet Galway graveyard last year, I heard an amazing man tell a heartbreaking truth with unbelievable conviction and power in his voice.

Where, he wanted to know, was his little sister?

Why was nobody giving him any answers?

It brought tears to many an eye to hear him speak his truth. I stood there, stunned in admiration, listening to a man who had been told he was worthless for much of his life.

Born into a horrible institution, fostered out to a family who beat and abused him; dealing with the terrible stigma of being branded as “illegitimate” as he set off on his journey through life.

And now, late in life, he had found out that he had a little sister who may or may not have been buried in a septic tank.

I marvelled at the conviction in the voice of a man who had found love and become a good father against all the odds, despite rather than because of a land which proclaimed to cherish all of its children equally ... while it branded some of them “bastards”, the cruellest label of all.

In the same graveyard this year, I heard an amazing woman find her voice.

She wanted to know why she had been locked up for years, even though she had committed no crime.

She wanted to know why she worked as a slave for nuns in a laundry, within a two minute walk of the beating heart of an Irish city.

Why was she imprisoned?

Why was she forgotten by the world outside?

Why? Why? Why?

And, in case we wanted to blame the nuns, she reminded us of a girl, a fellow inmate, who managed to persuade a workman to sneak a letter out to her sister in affluent Salthill.

The man thought he was doing the poor girl a favour.

So he delivered the letter to her family home.
    

Remembering the 796 Tuam Babies

It was a desperate plea for help, to be rescued from this life of slavery. Instead, she was beaten black and blue, and bullied by the nuns for months for daring to make contact with the outside world.

As soon as she had received the letter, her sister had contacted the nuns. She let it be known that she never wanted to hear from her again.

She had brought shame to the family. She had no sister, she was told.

The poor woman was distraught for months afterwards, if not for the rest of her life. The trauma of being locked up in an institution was only compounded by being rejected for a second time by her own family in caring, 'Catholic' Ireland.

This country owes a massive apology to these two individuals; and to so many women, elderly now, who were locked in institutions for the terrible crime of bringing a child into the ‘Land of Saints and Scholars’.

Yet it continues to fight them, to deny them the redress they are owed.

Funny, how I never see the prominent ‘Vote No’ campaigners in my area attend the poignant annual ceremony of remembrance for the Magdalene Laundry women in Galway each February.

They express such concern for the sanctity of human life, but don't seem so concerned with showing compassion for those who were victimised or had their lives ruined by the land of shame.

But the time has come . . .

The voiceless are finding their voices now.

Their testimonials are so, so painful, and they remind us of an appalling past when our nation shamed its own women.

If you became pregnant outside marriage, you were locked up for a year before your baby was taken from you. Forever.

If your baby died, he or she may have been buried in a septic tank. Or – and you may never know because there are no 'official' records – the child was adopted, illegally, by a ‘good’ couple in the United States.

If, God forbid, you were unlucky enough to become pregnant for a second time, you were branded a “repeat offender”.

Even though you may have been raped, or totally innocent to the ways of the world after being incarcerated in a Mother and Baby Home.

This was the land which locked up women for a year and confiscated their babies for the ‘crime’ of having a baby outside marriage.

It locked them up for two years if they were unfortunate enough to become pregnant for a second time.

It was unimaginable how badly this country treated these women and their “illegitimate” children, treating them as second class citizens when they attended 'normal' schools or locking them up in harsh Industrial Schools, where abuse was rife and nobody heard their cries of despair.

Compassion was nowhere to be found.   

                                

Savita: her death made headlines all across the globe

This is the land that told us sex was sinful, that the most natural thing in the world was somehow shameful, and that a pregnant daughter or sister was the biggest shame a “respectable” Irish family could face.

It's the land which stopped a teenage rape victim from travelling to the UK, because our constitutional ban on abortion put the rights of the unborn child on an equal footing as that of a traumatised teenage girl.

No wonder so many of us buried ourselves in alcohol, suppressing the natural Irish joy for life, and that alcohol abuse led to risky behaviour and yet more crisis pregnancies.

During my own university days, I had no idea that a group of women I was friendly with were so brave.

They were the first generation of ordinary Irish women who dared to bring their children up as single mothers. Had they become pregnant just a decade before, they could have been seized from their own homes in the dead of night and locked up in Mother and Baby Homes.

Perhaps the women themselves, struggling to juggle motherhood, work, and college, did not even realise how ground-breaking they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This is the land that told an Indian woman in distress that “This is a Catholic country” when she was denied the health care she was crying out for at my local hospital.

The death of Savita Halappanavar at University Hospital Galway led to a huge outpouring of grief in my city, a beautiful candlelight vigil in Eyre Square, and the start of a movement for change.

It is the land which told hundreds of women there was nothing it could do for them when they received a terrible diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality.

Arlette Lyons of Terminations for Medical Reasons (TFMR)
has spoken bravely of her harrowing journey to the UK

They found there was a special section in Liverpool Women’s Hospital just for Irish women, who made the same lonely journey knowing that the child they desperately wanted had no chance of survival.

This is the land which banned books by the likes of John McGahern and Edna O’Brien, which seem so innocent now but were seen as “controversial” because they dared to explore issues of sexuality in a place gripped by guilt and shame.

This land had the power to destroy a writer’s livelihood, or force him or her into emigration, for daring to explore issues which seem so tame to the modern reader.

It’s a land where priests had the power to name and shame single mothers from the pulpits, or could collude with Gardai to drag them from their beds at dawn, never to be seen in their homes and villages again.

It’s a land which had the power to force the resignation of a Government Minister for daring to try to introduce a mother and child healthcare system.

It would have greatly enhanced the ability of single mothers to bring up their own children, rather than being locked up in horrible institutions.

Dr Noel Browne, forced to resign in 1950, was way ahead of his time. His radical measure was seen as too much of a threat to the power structures in Irish society at the time.

It’s a land which has exported so many of its problems. As a much younger man, I met so many wonderful but troubled Irish people in Britain who had fled their native land, branded as “illegitimate”, beaten or abused, and many dealing with addiction issues brought about by so much pain.

In 2018, Ireland is still exporting its ‘problems’ in terms of so many women with crisis pregnancies from every one of the 26 counties who travel to the UK for terminations every day, week, and year.

But those women are finding their voices now.

In recent weeks, they have shown incredible bravery to face the TV cameras or radio microphones and tell the stories of the crises they faced and the obstacles they overcame. How they had to sneak away, like criminals, to another country because of our nation's shame.

They have faced hostility and derision from the kind of people who once locked unmarried mothers up in Mother and Baby Homes. But they have faced their detractors with dignity, because they believe that Ireland needs to change.

None of the women who formed Terminations for Medical Reasons (TFMR) six years ago wants to see another woman go through the agony and pain of facing the loneliest of journeys, on a plane load of revellers heading over to Liverpool for the weekend.

Not many people I know want to see a widespread “culture” of abortion in this country.

Nobody I knows believes in the concept of "social abortion" which has been repeated as a mantra over the past few weeks.

But we do have compassion for women in crisis and we sure as hell want an end to this land of shame.


Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook: http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Is it time to stop punishing tragedy?

On the daytime radio show in which the host gets paid almost €500,000 per year to hear the concerns of the ‘plain people’ of Ireland, I heard a middle-aged man proclaim his total opposition to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment this week.

If his daughter became pregnant because of rape, he told the host, he sincerely hoped she would choose to keep the child rather than go through with an abortion.

A few weeks earlier, in a vast hall, I heard a woman tell an audience of about 400 people that the act of giving birth “heals the effect of rape”.

She called on the people at the Save the Eighth campaign launch in the West of Ireland to stop rape from happening rather than kill an unborn child.

She didn’t explain how that could be done.

At the same event, a woman told me that the proposed legislation for unrestricted abortion would bring a culture of ‘social’ abortion to Ireland.

I was shocked.                                                      

Laying flowers at the graves of the Magdalene Laundry women
in the heart of Galway City. Photo by Ciaran Tierney

She made it sound as though some women decided to have abortions in the same way as they decide what make-up to wear or what club to go to on a Saturday night.

This deeply personal issue is not something that is discussed much, if ever, among my circle of friends. But I am pretty sure that no woman I know has ever opted to have a ‘social abortion’, given the trauma, the heartbreak, the soul-searching, the sense of loss, and the secrecy involved.

There is the fear of confiding in an Irish doctor, given the very real threat of facing 14 years’ imprisonment, or of taking pills in secret, without any guidance or medical support because of the stigma – in fact the criminalisation – involved.

There is no doubt that people I have spoken to in recent months on the ‘No’ side have sincerely held views, and that they believe right is on their side.

And many people share their concerns.

But I live in the city where Savita Halappanvar lost her life at just 31 years of age. The young woman in distress, who was found to be miscarrying, died of blood poisoning after doctors declined to terminate her 17-week long pregnancy.

“This is a Catholic country,” she was told at University Hospital Galway, a comment which made headlines all across the globe and shamed huge swathes of the Irish population.

Regardless of whether or not Savita’s life could have been saved, she was shown an appalling lack of compassion in a country which has a long and shameful history when it comes to how it treats its women.

Every October, Savita is remembered at a candlelight vigil in the heart of my city. The overwhelming feelings are of sadness and shame, sadness that a beautiful young woman lost her life in Galway and shame that she was treated in such a way.

The late Savita Halappanvar is remembered with a
candlelight vigil in Galway each October. RIP.

 

The candlelight vigil takes place in Eyre Square, just five minutes away from the Magdalene Laundry where women were locked up for decades. There is such raw emotion, sadness, and pain when a small group of people gather to honour the women of the laundry each February.

The speeches at Bohermore remind us of how Irish women have been discriminated against, shamed, and mistreated for decades.

I also live in the same county as the Tuam Mother and Baby Home, another place which made headlines all over the world in recent years.

It could be argued that the way in which the bodies of 796 dead bodies were discarded around a septic tank has nothing to do with Ireland’s current abortion debate.

But at the moment I am reading Alison O’Reilly’s harrowing new book, ‘My Name is Bridget’, which looks at how a young woman called Bridget Dolan was incarcerated against her will for the terrible ‘crime’ of expecting a baby outside marriage.

As Alison puts it, she was “following in the footsteps of more than a century’s worth of lost souls” when her family sent her in such shame to the Tuam home.

In those days, unmarried mothers could be named and shamed by priests from the altars of Catholic Churches throughout Ireland.

Their families were quick to judge and to bring them to the grim institutions where they were shown no love as they struggled to survive.

Catherine Corless won a People of the Year award after
uncovering the gross injustice at the Tuam Home

“The mothers-to-be were generally sent into the Home either by their doctor or parish priest or their family, normally arriving at the forbidding front door around a month before they gave birth. When their time came, they were offered no pain relief during labour, another facet of their punishment,” wrote Alison.

Nothing to do with abortion, you might say, but a grim reminder of our nation’s shame in the not-so-distant past.

For the children of these women, it was impossible to leave this stigma and shame behind.

“You were just a bastard in their eyes . . . We were nothing but a kind of scum, you weren’t normal because you didn’t belong to a wedded family. It is totally crazy,” said one survivor last year.

Tuam Home survivor Peter Mulryan at his mother's grave.
She was locked up in the Magdalene Laundry in Galway. 

This afternoon I undertook a walking tour of Galway with a group of female foreign language students. The issue of the referendum came up when they asked about the posters on lamp-posts and all of them were shocked when they heard that a woman could face 14 years in prison for having an abortion in Ireland.

Two of them had seen social media images of a ‘pro-life’ street procession in Limerick City at the weekend, in which young girls dressed in their First Communion dresses marched behind a car which was blaring out The Rosary from loudspeakers.

They found those images “totally crazy”.

A few weeks ago, I met a brave woman called Arlette who is a member of a group called Terminations for Medical Reasons (TFMR).

Arlette is not the kind of woman to get up on a soapbox, but her life was changed utterly when she was diagnosed with a case of fatal foetal abnormality six years ago.

After being told that her baby was going to die, she was then told that nothing could be done for her in Ireland. Her only options were to travel to another country or to go full-term.

She spoke of the agony she went through, the sadness and loneliness of her journey to Liverpool, and how she travelled home by boat because she could not face the ‘plane.

Then she found out there were hundreds of other women like her, women who were forced to travel to the UK or to carry a baby which had no chance of life full-term.

And her pain and sorrow turned to anger, prompting her to set up TFMR with other women who had dealt with the same injustice.               

Arlette Lyons of TFMR speaking in Galway

One of her colleagues, Tracey, has spoken of the devastation of being surrounded by revellers enjoying a weekend away on her short flight to Liverpool on St Patrick’s weekend.

She was 22 weeks pregnant when she found out that little Grace was terminally ill, with a condition which would ensure she would die of respiratory failure upon birth.

“I couldn’t bare this happening to my baby,” she says.

“I spent four weeks nodding along to people’s excited questions. I was slowly losing my mind. I had to go somewhere where they understood what me and my baby were going through.”

The slogan of TFMR is to “stop punishing tragedy”.

Women in the terrible situation faced by Arlette and Tracey should not have to deal with the shame and trauma of having to leave their friends, family, and familiar faces behind after being given such devastating news.

Abortion already is a reality in Ireland, but women facing such a tough, life-changing decision are being forced to travel to the UK or Europe for terminations or take illegal pills in secret at home.

Those who have been raped, sexually abused, or are carrying foetuses with no chance of life deserve so much more than being criminalised, with the threat of 14 years in prison.

It’s time to put an end to Ireland’s culture of shaming women and brushing issues under the carpet, whether by locking up young women in Mother and Baby Homes or condemning them to secret and lonely trips to England.

We can put that shame behind us – and stop punishing tragedy – by voting ‘Yes’ on May 25.

 Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia/

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