IRELAND
The Associated Press
BY SHAWN POGATCHNIK
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DUBLIN (AP) — Revelations this month that nuns had buried nearly 800 infants and young children in unmarked graves at an Irish orphanage during the last century caused stark headlines and stirred strong emotions and calls for investigation. Since then, however, a more sober picture has emerged that exposes how many of those headlines were wrong.
The case of the Tuam “mother and baby home” offers a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media, embellishing occurrences that should have been gripping enough on their own.
The key fact is that a researcher, Catherine Corless, spent years seeking records of all the children who died in the orphanage in County Galway during its years of operation from 1925 to 1961. She found 797 death records – and only one record that one of the youngsters had been buried alongside relatives in a Catholic cemetery.
The rest, Corless surmised, were likely interred in unmarked graves on the orphanage grounds, including in a disused septic tank. She and other Tuam residents called for a state-funded investigation to identify remains and give the children a proper memorial.
The reports of unmarked graves shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Irish public, who for decades have known that some of the 10 defunct “mother and baby homes,” which chiefly housed the children of unwed mothers, held grave sites filled with forgotten dead.
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