About 56,000 people – from girls up to 12 years old to women in their 40s – were sent to the 18 institutions surveyed, where about 57,000 children were born, according to the report.
One in seven of these children (15%) did not survive long enough to leave their homes, but the state did not sound the alarm about high mortality rates, even though it was “known to local and national authorities” and was “Registered in official publications,” the report found.
Prior to 1960, mothers ‘and babies’ homes did not save the lives of “illegitimate” children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their chances of survival, ”he said.
The report called infant mortality rates the “most disturbing feature of these institutions.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the report “opens a window to a deeply misogynistic culture in Ireland over several decades” and that the report “reveals significant failures of the state and society”.
The report, which spans more than 2,800 pages, was published just days after its key findings were circulated to a national newspaper – aggravating the pain and anguish of survivors who have waited years for the final report – and who are being reprimanded. he had promised a first view of it to the Minister of Children.
Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Alliance for Adoption Rights and a member of a dedicated group of survivors appointed to advise the government, told CNN on Tuesday that the excerpts reported on Sunday show that the Irish government could seek to “trivialize” human rights abuses. they took place on a “massive scale” inside these houses.
During her time at the home of mother and baby Sean Ross Abbey, Lee said she was “deprived” of freedom, independence and autonomy and “subject to the tyranny of the nuns,” who told mothers daily that they would atone for their sins by working for our custody and handing over the children of the nuns for forced adoption ”.
Lee, whose story was told in an Oscar-nominated film starring Judi Dench, added that she was “ironized” by the nuns during a difficult labor, who told her that “pain was a punishment. for my promiscuity ”.
The Commission’s final report reported that this practice was not uncommon.
For many survivors and groups of lawyers, there is concern that the report fails to justify their experience.
Lohan told TEN’s national broadcaster that the institutions are a “form of social engineering” and that “the state and the church have worked together to ensure that unmarried women – mothers and girls who were seen as a threat to the country’s moral tone.” they were “imprisoned behind these very high walls to ensure that they would not affect or offend public morality.”
On Tuesday, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Affairs, Roderic O’Gorman, said: “The report makes it clear that Ireland has had a stifling, oppressive and brutally misogynistic culture for decades, with ubiquitous stigma. of unmarried mothers and their children have robbed those individuals of the agency and sometimes their future. “
The survivors will receive an official apology from Martin, the Irish prime minister, on Wednesday.
But for many, those excuses will not be enough.
Lohan told CNN that he did not agree with the planned state apology, saying no apology should be issued until the survivors had a chance to read and digest the Commission’s findings, which could take many weeks.
She also suggested that the apology should be the first of a series of several, noting that the commission’s investigations covered only 18 institutions, while about 180 sites were part of an Irish system that facilitates neglect of children, premature death, forced adoptions, forced disappearances, forced labor, stripping of identities, falsification of state documents and falsification of maternal consent.
The report does not seem to fully addresses allegations of forced or illegal adoptions, stating only that “many allegations have been made that large sums of money have been given to Irish institutions and agencies that have organized foreign adoptions. Such allegations are unproven and impossible to prove. rejected “.
Tens of thousands have passed through other state hospitals and private institutions and “suffered the same fate,” she said.
Taking a brief look at the summary of the report on Wednesday, Lohan said survivors were left overwhelmed by the apparent lack of attention to major issues and that some survivors felt their evidence was unbelievable because the Commission rejected certain accusations, citing lack of evidence.
The question of why the houses were set up in the first place seems to have been analyzed, said some groups of lawyers, undermining the trauma suffered by mothers and their children.
While the report documented the testimony of women who detailed torture and beatings, she said that “there is no doubt that women in the homes of mothers and babies have been subjected to emotional abuse, but there is very little evidence of physical abuse and no evidence of abuse. sexual. “
Mary Harney, who was born in the Bessborough home and was later sent to an industrial school in Cork, said a first reading of her findings left her feeling that the report was “mostly in favor of the perpetrators”.
“They say the conditions in the houses were bad – and they choose different houses – but they generally say there was no evidence of systematic abuse,” Harney said.
“What would it take (for them) to classify something as brutal abuse?” she asked.
The report does not appear to address the testimony of survivors who said senior members of the Catholic Church forced them into homes in addition to their family members.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Martin said that “in principle I believe that the religious orders in question should make a contribution” to a proposed compensation scheme.
“Destroyed” records
The legislation will also apply to “any other place where reasonable intervention is required,” according to the Ministry of Child and Youth Affairs.
About 973 children died at or near the home of mother and baby Tuam, according to the commission, which revealed that some of their remains were found inside a disused sewer tank.
Only 50 burial records were located in Tuam; others “may have been lost or destroyed over the years,” according to a March 2019 interim report.
A total of 900 babies born or hospitalized near Bessborough in Cork County died in infancy or childhood.
The Commission also found that between 1920 and 1977, the bodies of more than 950 children who had died in some homes were sent to university medical schools for “anatomical studies”.
Access forbidden
Survivors have long hoped that the commission will reveal more about allegations of arbitrary detention, cruelty and neglect, forced adoption and vaccination processes that have taken place inside homes, and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
And, in essence, they also hoped it would help them access their personal files, including information about missing relatives and children buried in unmarked graves.
Critics of the law have successfully argued that sealing the commission’s records was illegal under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive that gives people the right to access their data.
Survivors ‘rights groups now warn that the government – and state agencies, including the Children’s and Family Agency, Tusla – continue to restrict survivors’ access to their own files.
In a statement to CNN, Tusla raised the issue of access to the government, saying that “the absence of legislation to provide information will continue to be a source of great anxiety for people, and solving this problem is beyond Tusla’s reach. “
“We acknowledge the injuries and traumas suffered by those affected by the Commission’s report on mothers ‘and babies’ homes, which are clearly looking for their identity,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the agency routinely denies survivors – especially adopted people – access to their personal information, birth certificates, identities and even ethnicities, says Lohan.
“These abuses did not end in 1998 when the last of the horrible places closed.”