796 Irish babies in a septic tank

The_Banker

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How is it that almost 800 babies have been discovered dumped in a septic tank and there is no criminal investigation?

If this was Bosnia, Iraq, Chile or Afghanistan the UN would be investigating.

Bob Geldof was right all those years ago. Banana Republic, Septic Isle.
 
How is it that almost 800 babies have been discovered dumped in a septic tank and there is no criminal investigation?

If this was Bosnia, Iraq, Chile or Afghanistan the UN would be investigating.

Bob Geldof was right all those years ago. Banana Republic, Septic Isle.

It's not even that there hasn't been an investigation but where was the media? This isn't a new story by all accounts but it is the first time I have heard about it. It's horrific and yet there is very little outrage. I don't understand it to be honest.
 
I thought this article in todays Examiner (about a home in Cork) showed the harrowing circumstances women faced....

Expected to give birth without pain medication
One nun insisting that mother give birth without making noise
Allowed bleed after giving birth
Children taken from mothers when they were three years old
Mothers having to "work off their debt" to the nuns (indentured slavery?)


http://www.irishexaminer.com/irelan...-bessborough-271158.html#.U5Fzf8oD9LU.twitter

What a sick society.
 
Makes you wonder if our buddies up North didnt have a point re Rome Rule & Priest-ridden. If those nuns arent toasting down below then the place doesnt exist. There's nothing quite so appalling as religious based evil (& I know CoI institutions were much the same, so there's no anti-catholic bias to the above rant). A blacker day for this little country than any bailout.
 
For an institution that is so pro-life how come they have treated lives in their care as such?
 
Makes you wonder if our buddies up North didnt have a point re Rome Rule & Priest-ridden. If those nuns arent toasting down below then the place doesnt exist. There's nothing quite so appalling as religious based evil (& I know CoI institutions were much the same, so there's no anti-catholic bias to the above rant). A blacker day for this little country than any bailout.

+1 to that.
A plague on all their houses.
 
The Catholic Church among other Christian churches teaches that we are born with original sin.

It is not a huge step to babies in septic tanks.

But all this is 50 years ago. The question today is why do we let them run our schools?
 
Makes you wonder if our buddies up North didnt have a point re Rome Rule & Priest-ridden. If those nuns arent toasting down below then the place doesnt exist. There's nothing quite so appalling as religious based evil (& I know CoI institutions were much the same, so there's no anti-catholic bias to the above rant). A blacker day for this little country than any bailout.

+ 1

Though as a member of the C.O.I we are are obliged to weekly recite at Service that we believe in one Holy Catholic Church. I never quite did get a straight answer from the Vicar as to why this might be . . because sure is light is day I have no interest whatsoever in the Roman Catholic Church and its barbarity. I presume all C.O.I do not take this stance.
 
People are still afraid of the RCC and their cohorts. I don't know why? It is time for the state to break all ties with them. Kick them out of the schools and hospitals.

Around here the local priest goes around like he is lord of the manor with everyone tipping their cap to him. I for one don't and will openly tell him what I think of him and his organisation.
 
They are being slowly weeded out of the education system but my only concern is the rise in the Educate Together schools. Fantastic concept but I have had friends remove their children because they felt the Koran was very much at the forefront. Are we replacing one dictatorship over another?
 
If those nuns arent toasting down below then the place doesnt exist.
Betsy, that is a dreadful comment not typical of your usually balanced posts. The worst that can be accused, so far as I can see, is malnutrition? Is that the nuns' fault? Do we blame African parents on the malnutrition of their children? Were the nuns living a life of luxury at the expense of the children in their care? If there was malnutrition the fault does not lie with the nuns, it lies with a society that didn't provide for them.
 
Betsy, that is a dreadful comment not typical of your usually balanced posts. The worst that can be accused, so far as I can see, is malnutrition? Is that the nuns' fault? Do we blame African parents on the malnutrition of their children? Were the nuns living a life of luxury at the expense of the children in their care? If there was malnutrition the fault does not lie with the nuns, it lies with a society that didn't provide for them.
I think it’s widely accepted that the state was ultimately responsible for the welfare of children in care in the state and that it outsourced the function to a wholly unsuitable organisation. That in no way negates the responsibility of the people or institutions in question to behave in a humane and appropriate manner. If children were literally starving to death in their care it was 100% the responsibility of the Bon Secour order to do something about it. This is an order that came to Ireland after the famine to help starving people and 100 years later they let babies die of malnutrition in their care. Mortality rates of over 50% were never the norm in 20th century Ireland. This was an international order, part of a Catholic Church that was not backward about raising issues relating to their twisted version of morality. They obviously didn’t think half of the children in their care dying was worth making a fuss about.
 
Its not just about the babies and children found in mass graves, its also about forcibly removing babies from their mothers and selling them. Some of these women have never come to terms with this and never will. Imagine feeling that loss for your whole life. The whole thing is just disgusting.
 
Until the late 60's 97% of children born outside marriage in this country were "given up" for adoption.
 
It's a bit easy to simply blame the Church and a few evil nuns for this. For this to occur, the Authorities and Society in general would have had to have turned their backs and ignored what was going on behind those walls. Thankfully I am too young but I was talking to my mother about it and she said the only new thing from this story for her was the disgusting way the children were buried. She says everyone knew back then that these women and children were being mistreated but it was never talked about. It was just brushed under the rug like always in Ireland. This is a scandal for Irish society and it is a dark chapter that we all have to face up to instead of looking for bogey men to blame.

It would be interesting to see how future generations judge us for the way we deal with certain issues.

EDIT: I see in the Irish Times that the woman who researched this is not happy with the reporting that babies were dumped in a septic tank. She denies ever saying that. Wonder if this story has run away with itself.
 
EDIT: I see in the Irish Times that the woman who researched this is not happy with the reporting that babies were dumped in a septic tank. She denies ever saying that. Wonder if this story has run away with itself.
It absolutely has - OP herself compares what happened to Bosnia etc. Betsy Og (normally sensible) hopes the nuns rot in hell. About 10 stories in the Sindo from Emer O'Kelly to Gene Kerrigan outdoing themselves in demonization of the nuns. We have been easily provoked by a British newspaper raking up in hysterical terms what has actually been publicly known, even discussed in Dail Eireann, for at least 80 years. At last a sign of someone breaking ranks - Ho Chi Quinn is condemning the international hysteria. He, like the nuns, welcomes an enquiry. And I expect that just as for Bethany we will get a much more contextualised interpretation of these events.

A very interesting Sindo article quotes from some Scottish doctor visiting these homes in 1955. He says the "County Council paid the home £1 per week for each child and mother. That is a pittance." And indeed it was, I reckon about €50 per week in today's money.

Purple describes the State as outsourcing this problem of society. Good analogy. How many takers would there have been at £1 per week? The nuns were the only takers in town, and now we damn them to rot in hell for taking on the job.

This whole sordid mess was of course a product of a suffocating confessional society. But don't just blame the Pope of Rome and his clergy. Blame De Valera, blame Padraic Pearse, blame the vast majority of the citizenry who wallowed in this stifling culture. Scapegoating the nuns and asking why they didn't die of malnutrition is a grotesque cop out.
 
It absolutely has - OP herself compares what happened to Bosnia etc. Betsy Og (normally sensible) hopes the nuns rot in hell. About 10 stories in the Sindo from Emer O'Kelly to Gene Kerrigan outdoing themselves in demonization of the nuns. We have been easily provoked by a British newspaper raking up in hysterical terms what has actually been publicly known, even discussed in Dail Eireann, for at least 80 years. At last a sign of someone breaking ranks - Ho Chi Quinn is condemning the international hysteria. He, like the nuns, welcomes an enquiry. And I expect that just as for Bethany we will get a much more contextualised interpretation of these events.

A very interesting Sindo article quotes from some Scottish doctor visiting these homes in 1955. He says the "County Council paid the home £1 per week for each child and mother. That is a pittance." And indeed it was, I reckon about €50 per week in today's money.

Purple describes the State as outsourcing this problem of society. Good analogy. How many takers would there have been at £1 per week? The nuns were the only takers in town, and now we damn them to rot in hell for taking on the job.

This whole sordid mess was of course a product of a suffocating confessional society. But don't just blame the Pope of Rome and his clergy. Blame De Valera, blame Padraic Perase, blame the vast majority of the citizenry who wallowed in this stifling culture. Scapegoating the nuns and asking why they didn't die of malnutrition is a grotesque cop out.

Good points.
 
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