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listen to Ellie read her article by clicking the play button

I have sat in front of my screen for so long since last Wednesday. I wanted so deeply to write, but the words just wouldn’t come. What on earth would my words do? What is the point in writing when so much else, so much better, has been said and written? But I figured I wanted to record the moment here on Heyday. To not speak of it in a community for women feels like more denial, and there’s been enough of that.

I downloaded the final report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and read the 76 pages of executive summaries and dipped in and out of the remaining 3000. I read a lot of commentaries, heard a great speech from politician Catherine Connolly in the Dáil, and watched a film on the New York Times about the brilliant historian and activist, Catherine Corless, whose work on the discovery of human bones in a mass grave in Tuam formed the genesis of the commission. I watched a beautiful, but harrowing film made by creatives who wanted to mark the moment; to hear the truth, to record the voices. To have there be an honest record.

Because there isn’t one. Not a proper one. Not the one that was promised. The commission’s report, whilst long, fell short.

There is no record of over 900 babies deaths and their burial locations. And that’s just from one home in Cork. 9000 babies died in total. There were 57,000 babies born in these homes between the 1920s and the 1990s. There is no proper record of why, or how it happened for so long. They didn’t record a lot of the actual lived experience as told to them by women who were there. There is no proper record of payments made to institutions for adoptions abroad, or of children used for vaccine trials, or of what early days, weeks, months and years were really like for the unfortunate children born into these conditions of shame, and for their mothers.

“Many lived in these homes for years. Imagine - a child without a birthday. No party, no cake - no love. Imagine no love.”

500 women gave their stories to the commission. They had to live it all again as they told of their past, with the hope of contributing to correct recording, memorialisation and process of redress.

Taoiseach Michael Martin gave an apology saying the survivors were ‘failed by the State”. Which is correct, if a little lily-livered. Apologies matter, but they are about the past, not the future. And words matter, they do, but so does accountability, consequence and recompense. And those are what the survivors need.

WHY? HOW?

Why did this happen? Why did the state, the church, and many guardians of society at the time allow this cruelty?

How did they turn a blind eye to what they knew was happening? And how did they allow what they did see? Are the pillars of society immune to the Catholic guilt that created all this tragedy? How on earth did they sleep at night?

“And where are the men? Where are the fathers?”

One woman said she was told she had to be mindful of her boyfriend’s career, and that was why she was sent to the home, to essentially sacrifice her own, precious life to birth her child and live in secret. His child too. All so no one would talk. All so he can hold his head high in his job in the bank, or an office, or in the pub drinking pints.

How disposable women and children were. How warped was this culture built on the concept of reputation and shame? Mostly shame.

By this point, you know the details. Indeed, a lot of the world now know the details of this stain on our soul, this dark zone on our record - yes us, the Irish! On this small island of craic and camaraderie, of saints and scholars, of a thousand welcomes.

Well, just look at how we treat our own - tiny bodies hidden in unmarked mass graves, women emotionally ruined.

Just look.

We treat our animals better.

A woman who became pregnant out of wedlock was deemed the ultimate disgrace on a family name. Branded a slut and a harlot, dirty and shameful all because she had sex which led to a pregnancy - that most normal of human biological events. And what if they were in love? Isn’t the Catholic Church supposed to nurture and protect life and family above all else? What about their pro-life argument - fighting to preserve the rights of the unborn? Oh, I see, never mind about the ‘born child’ if God hasn’t sanctioned a marriage on the altar beforehand. No, no, that’s a mortal sin for both mother and child. It’s illegitimate. Do keep up.

For a religion supposedly structured around a pure theological understanding of love and the communion of its people under one good God, the human manifestation of Catholicism has so often been revealed to be structured around a separate holy trinity of power, corruption and shame.

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Article 25 of The Universal Human Rights Declaration, written in 1948, states, “ Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

There is no evidence of that duty to protect mother and child in the pages I read of the report. The physical, emotional and psychological health of women and children were ignored and blatantly abused. Exclusion, confusion and abandonment their primary experience - not generally terms we tend to associate with becoming a first-time mum.

Their futures were robbed from them. Their family lines rubbed out. They were sentenced to a life path of pain, which in turn carries on generationally. This level of hurt becomes a part of the fabric of the family. Stress hormones affect genetics. ‘The sins of our fathers’ as they would have said themselves, carrying on and on, never free, never settled, never at peace. Like limbo, or purgatory - that other Catholic construct - which now appears real after all. It’s the life of these women and their children - these survivors - lived here on earth after ‘disobeying’ the rules of the church and being spirited away to secrecy. To shame.

There are so many survivors of the mother and baby homes still denied their birth information. Denied their identity and their parent’s identities and therefore their medical records, leaving them with no idea of family health patterns for example - denied their past, present and future. Like living ghosts - walking amongst a community but not knowing to whom they belong.

And all of this abuse and displacement occurred in full sight of the department of health, the state, the church and the local guardians of society such as GP’s and local politicians, all of whom have a duty of care towards citizens. It took place all the way up to 1998. All behind closed doors and windows with bars concealing dormitories with no privacy, not enough toilets, women birthing in agony whilst being emotionally abused by the nuns and cribs containing multiple, sick babies. All in the name of God, in the name of refuge...

Refuge; there’s a word, it means “shelter or protection from danger and distress”. The report stated that the mother and baby homes were intended as a place of refuge when a woman was turned away from her family, as many were. But they neglected to include the other elements required for refuge - comfort, rest and safety. They neglected them.

There is so much shame here and none of it belongs to the survivors or their family members who tried to help. It belongs to the warped judgement and collusion of the Irish church and state in a bid to control women and, in their eyes, thus protect society.

There are no words, and there are not enough. For shame, Ireland, for shame.
Look what you’ve done. Look at what you’ve done. Because we are.

And we will not look away again.

Ellie Balfe, January 2021