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Midland car worker's plea: Tell us what happened to 222 children who died at care home
By Mike Lockley
A Midland car worker has won his 16-year fight to get the Irish government to investigate a former children’s home where 222 youngsters died from 1922 to 1949. Derek Leinster, who now lives in Rugby, was a former resident of the controversial Bethany Home in Rathgar, Dublin, which has been included in the Commission of Investigation into mother and baby homes in Ireland. Derek, aged 72, claims he suffered neglect at the home and as a result endured gastroenteritis, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumonia in his formative years at the home, where his unmarried mother, Hannah, was forced to spend the last four months of her pregnancy. The Commission for Investigation has previously probed the Magdalene laundries featured in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. The movie is based on the real-life story of how journalist Martin Sixsmith helps an Irish mother become reunited with her son after Catholic nuns, who ran the laundries, cruelly separated them, and told Philomena Lee that her son had died. Like the Magdalene laundries, Bethany Home housed “fallen women” – including unmarried mothers. But it was run by the Protestant Church of Ireland rather than the Catholic Church. Derek was one of the lucky ones. He survived. But he claims the victims’ harrowing stories have been swept under the carpet – partly because it was a Protestant-run establishment. Meanwhile, much ink has been spilled over the failings of Catholic care homes. Derek, who worked at Coventry’s Chrysler parts factory from 1969 to 1980, said: “I feel sick, I feel sad, I feel ashamed, but I have never allowed bitterness to get into my DNA. If I had, I would’ve been well gone by now.” The former boxer welcomes with caution Ireland Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s call for Bethany’s blackened past to be included in a probe of Catholic mum-and-baby homes. Documents reveal many of the infants who died between 1922 to 1949 were months, weeks, even days old. They fell victim to conditions such as malnutrition, heart failure, German measles and syphilis. The paperwork, gained by Derek in 2007, makes harrowing reading. The oldest victim was four-and-a-half. One child died after crawling into a scalding pot of gruel. Many survivors endured abuse after being illegally adopted. In April, Derek and fellow members of the Bethany Survivors Group saw their campaign for a memorial to those innocent victims unveiled at Dublin’s Mount Jerome cemetery. It was paid for by the government. At the ceremony, Derek said: “For too long, the short lives of these children have been unacknowledged, unnamed and their remains unmarked. “It is highly appropriate that at last we can now rectify this situation, and that all of us have the opportunity to pay our respects, and to jointly remember a very sad occurrence in our history.” As a result of being a Bethany resident Derek says he has no legal identity. He claims his school records do not exist. Derek’s childhood was joyless. Hope, tattered and frayed, fell from his slender shoulders like the rags he wore. His mother, Hannah who has since died, was forced to stay at Bethany as a punishment for conceiving out of wedlock. The horrors Derek endured at the home from 1941 to 1944 still stir in the mists of his memory. “I only have shadows,” said Derek. “I remember lying in rotten nappies and never having them changed. I was left to rot. In the Catholic society of Ireland, young, unmarried women and their children were crap – the muck at the bottom of shoes. “I spent weeks in an isolation ward and now suffer from a form of blood cancer. That’s because my bone marrow spent its young life fighting all the diseases that overwhelmed me.” Derek’s torment continued when he was dumped with foster parents clearly incapable of fending for themselves. He and a girl, 11 months older, were swept under the threadbare, grimy carpet of the shambling County Wicklow home. They were Ireland’s guilty secret. A previous child in the couple’s care died of pneumonia. The authorities simply handed them, like cannon fodder, two replacements. To throw further chaos into the dysfunctional family, the wife fell pregnant with a child of her own. “My father lived in another world,” Derek said matter-of-factly, “and he was a drinker. There were times when my shirt would be shiny with the muck. I was in rags. “Neighbours could see no sense in the couple having another child, so they ignored us. That is how they dealt with it. “You got food when you did and sometimes you’d have to catch a rabbit. When he did work, my father would work away. It was a terrible thing to have happened and it happened in what was, by and large, a wealthy community of protestant people. “None of us came through it without difficulties – it was a very tough experience for all.” At 15, Derek was handed a lifeline through a farm job and left for England. Three years later, with a tenner in his pocket, he settled in Rugby. Despite the emotional and physical scars, the grandfather to eight, harbours no anger towards his blood or foster parents. He believes it is the Irish government which should carry the guilt. Hannah has since died. “Twice I tracked down my mother,” Derek said. “The pain and suffering, she was never able to deal with that. She pulled an iron door down. “As for my foster parents, they were the best parents I had, they were the only parents I had. I learned to love my foster father and would have done anything for him. “The powers-that-be knew what was happening. It was no secret.” At last Irish politicians have heard the drum beaten by Derek and fellow Bethany survivors. Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan declared: “I am conscious of grievance on the part of people associated with Bethany Homes and I am anxious the scope of the inquiry would be beyond Tuam and County Galway. I would include all mother and baby homes with specific reference to the Bethany. “It is absolutely essential that the story be told, difficult and traumatic though that is, especially for the mothers and former babies, many of whom are now adults.” And he conceded: “Questions remain unanswered about the nature of adoptions and vaccine trials.” Derek isn’t holding his breath. “I have been close to the top of that hill many times, but I’ve been doing this for 16 years and won’t stop now.” In an angry swipe at politicians, he added: “Now they are all going round like drunken ducks. Where were all the saints 16 years ago? “I want justice for all survivors as a priority.”
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