IRELAND
i News
Katie Grant
Wednesday June 22nd 2016
The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home is notorious for the hundreds of babies and children who died there. Katie Grant meets a group of former “Home Babies” who suffered unimaginable hardships and are determined to expose the truth about the church-run institutions
Marie* beams with pride as she describes her two adult children. Unlike her, they were well-educated, could read and write by the time they started nursery and grew up showered with love and affection. Her joy is plain to see. But the 64-year-old Irish émigré has been keeping a secret their entire lives. Marie was born in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, an institution for unmarried mothers, and suffered years of abuse at the convent-run orphanage where she resided.
For decades Marie’s “impure” background was a source of enormous shame for her yet she yearned to be open with her children. In 2014, history caught up with her and the prospect of broaching the subject became unthinkable. “They love me so much that I think it would break their hearts,” she says.
Bon Secours: nearly 800 dead
Two years ago this month, an amateur historian went public with the terrible discovery she had made while researching Bon Secours, which operated in Tuam, Galway, between 1925 and 1961. Almost 800 babies and children had died at the home during that period, Catherine Corless revealed. Denied headstones and coffins, all the babies and children were interred in unconsecrated ground next to the home, she said. Her findings sent shock waves across Ireland.
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