{"id":77615,"date":"2021-05-25T15:58:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T13:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=77615"},"modified":"2021-05-25T18:17:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T16:17:55","slug":"whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/77615-whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland.html","title":{"rendered":"Whitewashing the sins of the state and the church in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In January, the report of an enquiry in the history of Ireland\u2019s mother and baby homes was published. It intended to draw a line under last century\u2019s notorious abuses in government and church-run institutions. Instead it has been condemned as a secretive and anti-human rights whitewash that is failing to provide accountability for the victims and which defies good practice in transitional justice.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt [age] two and a half, my mother was given a half an hour's notice that I was going. She had knitted me my little clothes, ready if I ever should go. She had put those on me, and she walked me up the corridor to the nun who took me from there. And that was the last my mother was ever to see of me. I was handed over to two strangers, elderly strangers at that. And the nun came back and took my clothes back to my mother, who had so lovingly knitted them for me and said she won't be needing these. This was the kind of parting that really was such an emotional tragedy for women and children,\u201d recounts Mary Harney in an interview<\/a> on 16 April 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 12 January 2021 a six-year enquiry into mother and baby homes run by the church or the Irish state over several decades last century, came to an end with the release of a 3,000 page final report<\/a>. It found that dozens of thousands of unmarried women were forced into such mother and baby homes. Thousands of babies died, their bodies in some cases unburied, with no certification, some thrown into cesspits. Illegal adoptions \u2013 such as Harney\u2019s \u2013 were rife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey stripped us of our identities. They changed our names. They changed our mothers\u2019 names. We can't find our birth certificates. If you're an ordinary citizen in Ireland, you can go get your birth certificate. If you're an ordinary citizen in Ireland, you probably go and access my birth certificate, but we can't. So they stripped us of identity, dignity, human rights,\u201d <\/em>says Harney<\/a>, now 72 years old and <\/em>a tutor at the Human Rights Law clinic at the National University in Galway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The special committee concluded that Ireland was an \u201cespecially cold and harsh place for women '' at the time \u2013 mainly the 50\u2019s, 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s \u2013 and unmarried mothers suffered serious discrimination. Societal attitudes are blamed: \u201cWomen who gave birth outside marriage were subject to particularly harsh treatment,\u201d it says. And the report makes clear that the abuse was \u201csupported by, contributed to, and condoned by, the institutions of the State and the Churches\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the last of several investigations set up by the Irish state over recent years into linked institutions: child abuse within industrial schools<\/a> into which children born in mother and baby homes were later educated; and the Magdalene Laundries network<\/a> in which many mothers were forced to work. The report found that around 9000 babies died, about 15% - one in six - of all the babies born in these institutions. \u201cThe very high rate of infant mortality (first year of life) in Irish mother and baby homes is probably the most disquieting feature of these institutions. The death rate among \u2018illegitimate\u2019 children was always considerably higher than that among \u2018legitimate\u2019 children but it was higher still in mother and baby homes: in the years 1945-46, the death rate among infants in mother and baby homes was almost twice that of the national average for \u2018illegitimate\u2019 children,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWomen were told they were paying for their sins\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yet the commission\u2019s work has come under serious and widespread criticism among survivors and experts. \u201cThe Irish government is always making efforts to compartmentalise, to put boundaries around its investigations\u201d, explains Maeve O\u2019Rourke, director of the Human Rights Law Clinic at the National University of Ireland, Galway. \u201cIf you were born in one state-funded, church-run institution, you were very likely to have ended up in another one, if not another and another. Those affected have always made the point that it's wrong to investigate on an institution-by-institution basis. But that is what the government has done,\u201d she says. It\u2019s \u201ca very piecemeal approach,\u201d notes James Gallen lecturer at Dublin City University and Expert Advisor on Transitional Justice to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on Mother and Baby Homes. Despite the clear \u201cnetwork of practises that may be deemed abusive,\u201d he says, each survivor group or group of affected families has had \u201cto start again in some respects,\u201d he says, lobbying each time, to say to the state: \u201cour issue, our group, our institutional setting matters, is also significant, and warrants investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Harney was herself born in the Bessborough Mother and Baby home in 1949. In the year of 1944, the report says that up to 75% of babies born there died. Harney is outraged by what she sees as many defects in the committee\u2019s report. The reports says that women admitted to the institutions ranged in age from 12 years old to women in their 40s. \u201cA 12-year-old is not a woman. It is a child,\u201d Harney says. \u201cThe commission admits that they were due to either incest or rape, and we have no investigation,\u201d Harney points out. Her own mother was denied medical attention during the process of giving birth. \u201cWomen were told they were paying for their sin, that they were now to pay for what they did in a few minutes or that kind of demeaning, degrading treatment of women.\u201d While the report admits the women \u201cdid suffer emotional abuse and were often subject to denigration and derogatory remarks,\u201d and a \u201ccold atmosphere\u201d, it takes it no further. \u201cI was appalled by the contradictory statements that were made in that report. On the one hand, there was abuse, but on the other hand, it wasn't really abuse,\u201d says Harney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Denying a respectful burial<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The report says there was no evidence that the women were forced into institutions. \u201cTo say that women weren't incarcerated beggars belief,\u201d says Harney. \u201cThese women had not committed any crimes. They were detained. This goes to the heart of human rights, enforced disappearance, trafficking of children by falsifying adoptions and falsifying information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One example that has gripped the Irish public imagination around the abuses is that of the Tuam mother and baby home in County Galway, where, in 2014, a substantial amount of human remains \u2013 many hundreds of bodies - was found in the grounds. \u201c<\/em>A local historian in Galway paid herself to gather every single death certificate that was in the general register office for a child who had died in the mother and baby home and then set about trying to find out where they were buried. We don't know how many of the babies are actually there but certainly there are many,\u201d says O\u2019Rourke. The structure in which dead babies were buried was formerly a septic tank. \u201cAlmost unbelievably, those babies are still in that place,\u201d she says. While the mother and baby home report talks about a process of \"respectful reburial\", the process will not begin until 2022. \u201cThere has been nothing done for the actual individual families who wish to know: is my relative in the ground either in Tuam or another institution? what is the cause of their death?\u201d O\u2019Rourke continues. \u201cThere are actually people wondering if that death certificate is correct or [if their] relative [could] actually be adopted somewhere else. Was it actually falsified or not? We know in Ireland that many people's birth certificates were falsified. There was a whole process of illegal adoption. People's identities were completely obliterated. And so people are wondering: was that done with death certificates, as well in furtherance of transnational adoptions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A secret enquiry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Rourke is also deeply disappointed by how the committee has dealt with survivor testimonies. The report suggests that some testimony is contaminated \u201cbecause the survivors seem to have met and spoken, but they don't say which bits of the testimony are contaminated [and] many of the survivors say that their testimony has not been repeated faithfully.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gallen describes the enquiry process as \u201critualistic,\u201d designed to \u201cgive survivors the feeling you've been heard. But really, we're going to take back control once we've heard you\u201d. <\/em>\u201cIt was essentially a secret enquiry because when it was set up in 2015, none of those people affected were given legal representation,\u201d says O\u2019Rourke. The enquiry \u201crefused entirely on a blanket basis to give any survivor access to any of the evidence it was gathering. And it refused even to give people like Mary [Harney] a transcript of the evidence that they had given. And it wouldn't give anybody their personal data,\u201d she says. \u201cI gave [an affidavit] to the confidential committee and I never got a copy of that statement back yet\u201d, confirms Harney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The commission has made 53 recommendations, including compensation and memorialisation. But Harney\u2019s previous experience with another of the investigations into industrial schools makes her even more sceptical of the government\u2019s approach. \u201cThe compensation there was based on whether or not you could prove you were in the institution, which is going to be hugely difficult with the mother and baby institutions, because we can't get our records to say that we were there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facing up to the past<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe very first thing the survivors and victims of these gross and systematic human rights violations [need] - which absolutely include torture and enforced disappearance - is information\u201d, says O\u2019Rourke. Ireland has a criminal justice system, a civil justice system, a system of coroner's inquest, freedom of information and is part of the Europe-wise rules on protection of privacy and access to your own information known as \u2018GDPR\u2019. But \u201csurvivors of these institutions have been systematically excluded from every single one of those systems,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The investigations were characterized by private hearings, with no \u201cmeaningful effort to see the sort of public outreach that you would see in transitional justice practise,\u201d notes Gallen. Without the sort of \u201cpublic theatrics of a truth commission hearing\u201d where survivors testimonies are led in a way that is sympathetic to them, the long, technical report is seen by the state as essentially an assessment of \u201cbureaucratic failure\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the report came out, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, said he accepted that the Church was part of a culture in which \"people were frequently stigmatised, judged and rejected\". He said: \"For that, and for the long-lasting hurt and emotional distress that has resulted, I unreservedly apologise to the survivors and to all those who are personally impacted by the realities it uncovers.\" The Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Miche\u00e1l Martin said the report described a \"dark, difficult and shameful chapter\" of Irish history to which \u201cwe must face up\u201d as a society and that women and children were treated \u201cexceptionally badly\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Harney the apologies are not enough. \u201cIt's a whitewash, it's no use. What we want is an apology that says successive Irish governments trampled all over [our] human rights. And when we get that apology and then the findings and the recommendations are based in international human rights, then that's a part of justice. What is of paramount importance to us is that we have free and unfettered access to our identities,\u201d she says. O\u2019Rourke shares Harney\u2019s frustration and dissatisfaction: \u201cI just find it so upsetting that basically the survivors are actually in a worse position now than they were six years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t
Recommended reading<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t
\"Bon<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\tThe scandal of the \u201cbanished babies\u201d in Ireland\r\n\t\t<\/a>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January, the report of an enquiry in the history of Ireland\u2019s mother and baby homes was published. It intended to draw a line under last century\u2019s notorious abuses in government and church-run institutions. Instead it has been condemned as a secretive and anti-human rights whitewash that is failing to provide accountability for the victims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":77613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"ji_location":[2281],"class_list":["post-77615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","ji_location-ireland"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhitewashing the sins of the state and the church in Ireland - JusticeInfo.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In January, the report of an enquiry in the history of Ireland\u2019s mother and baby homes was published. It intended to draw a line under last century\u2019s notorious abuses in government and church-run institutions. 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It intended to draw a line under last century\u2019s notorious abuses in government and church-run institutions. Instead it has been condemned as a secretive and anti-human rights whitewash that is failing to provide accountability for the victims and which defies good practice in transitional justice.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/77615-whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/77615-whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/77615-whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ireland_Mother-and-Baby-Homes.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ireland_Mother-and-Baby-Homes.jpg","width":950,"height":673,"caption":"For decades, tens of thousands of Irish girls and women, pregnant out of wedlock, have been subject to abuse, along with their babies, in church-run state institutions"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/77615-whitewashing-sins-state-church-ireland.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Whitewashing the sins of the state and the church in Ireland"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/","name":"JusticeInfo.net","description":"For justice to be done, it must be seen","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#organization","name":"Justice Info","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/justiceinfo_logo-trans_1200x1200px.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/justiceinfo_logo-trans_1200x1200px.png","width":1199,"height":1200,"caption":"Justice Info"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JusticeInfo\/","https:\/\/x.com\/justiceinfonet","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/justice-info","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCyCEsARodyuWtkWyhn-e7pA"]},{"@type":"Person","name":"Janet H. 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