How the Catholic Church Hid Away Hundreds of Irish Children | Times Documentaries

[Music] can you get your limbs in that hole there that's a little air monument at the rocks pull up in memory of the children and just inside up wall there is where we came across the chair would remain in a little apple orchard in there and that's what we don't get Napoli we jumped at the wall and when we landed we felt a hollow it was cracked in the slab so we actually pried it open when we pulled across like you could see that the skeleton remains there like thorns we were told in the next day that the priest had come up and said the prayer and knocked in there again which became in straight away and the whole side be little clearer [Music] we always past those 10 foot high walls and I used to wonder why with her broken glass all along the top of the wall I remember the children at school just Phegley and I do remember there were segregated from the rest of us weren't allowed play with them these were like a different species at the time my mother got pregnant of sight of marriage and of course that was a big sin and the priest in the parish got to hear about her and told her parents that was an orphan disgrace that she couldn't be seen out because she'd be a bad influence so they told her then that when the babies Jill that she was to be taken to chill the home and chill and the nuns were look after her there [Music] then he opened the door and told her she'll have to leave and she said I want my son and they just closed the door on her face and every week then she would walk in the center of tune of the Dublin road every week for five and a half years knocking on the door I want to take my son out a test my son years in there I want to reel him I want to look after and said no he's got to be fostered out and that was it I have no memories of us I was there for four and a half years there was a hedge each side of us and a crowd was walking that's the only memory I have I thought I was an element at one stage I used to get dreams nice that I was going hardens I'm gonna get them all and the first thing I do such a sigh of relief there's no love there's no care what happened in the home you know it can happen here that you can block things out at such a young age [Music] I suppose at the back of my mind it it was there in the subconscious wondering about the children I thought if it were just a simple history the history of our school sisters and how they worked and how the operation I thought I'd got the local library and thought I gave a volume of information in the home to work on there was absolutely nothing so I went to the local people night said that's the best way to find out information and locals were a bit hesitant to say oh the poor little children in there so you know they were treated badly not person to tell you they remember screaming in the home there's still very much a horseshoe affair bush I was gathering all this information at the back of my mind and getting a picture and who's only then I got the story of back in the 1970s that the two boys found a bones of children in a tank I've often thought about it afterwards like you know what did we come across like it was a chair or a chair chair you know and the amount of boys that willingness there was a good fuel like what we came across in 1972 was reported and the Cookman knew about it but yet didn't do and I think about it this whole story wouldn't get out of my head so I had to follow us I had to determine who was buried there first of all of course I asked the bad score sisters and they said they had no knowledge are no records whatsoever of any burial in home and garage the County Council who owned the land then and they had no records of burials either so I wondered then my thoughts went then to how many children actually died in the home that's an inspectors report for the Chilam home from 1947 it shows the condition of the babies and toddlers and it makes very harrowing reading a 13 month old baby in the care of Bon Secour sisters or a nursing congregation you have a miserable masse as a child with voracious appetite and no control of her body functions probably mentally defective wizards limbs three-month-old wizened limbs three weeks old am SES is intellicus deficit am the Excel copy of unbelievable okay all these deaths where the buried they're not in the mansion graveyard they're not in the mother's hometown graveyards it just becoming quite obvious what has happened at the time there was a lot of questioning my findings that it was impossible and I was asking myself is it the fact that there are illegitimate children if this stigma still around that people just still don't care just made me more determined to fight this and to say these children have to be there people have to know about us [Music] you [Music] Catherine contacted me and said that your sibling I said no I never heard of Posada and go after finding here she just threw them in am Marian Bridget Mona Ryan was born to a priestess mother dia and 1954 you can see it there same mother same address she says could be your sister they said she died from convulsions who said there's no doctors to certify that she died where she was buried I couldn't find out where she's buried this day I don't even know she could be sold off to America like a lot more it was done it has been said that children were trafficked across to United States after 796 children maybe some of those have been adopted illegally and that is a very serious matter if that is so we took their babies and we give to them or we sold them are we trafficked him or we starved them I wouldn't elected them I would denied them to the point of their disappearance from our hearts and from our sites from our country and in the case of June and possibly other places from life itself the stairs were complicit of course they were they were paying the sister's to the to the County Council look into these burials did enough question what was happened to these children where were they did the care did they turn a blind eye and why did not want nonconformity and say it was wrong what we didn't joke for a person that was supposedly baptized they're not supposed was in to own consecrated ground yes what did George to put them in there and went and covered up those sites and put prayer playground on top of it how would they feel about it what their sister our brother than there the government is the government and the church the church and it's like knock on a brick wall isn't it the seven years taken out of my life I don't know anything about and it wasn't my fault that I came into this world I he had I didn't choose I had no say in the matter I just get the sense of the babies down there that they are under me and I feel that there's some way I could help them just to get them out there and give them a proper proper burial know that I just love and you know you cannot write wrongs but things need to be recognized for watch the wire like [Music]

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 2,125,849

Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, nytimes.com, news, newspaper, feature, reporting, ireland, galway, tuam, history, ireland referendum, ireland news, ireland abortion, abortion in ireland, abortion news, abortion catholic church

Id: XoulaehrD_I

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Audubon7895]

It’s strange how this could happen. Horrible. Just horrible. Inhuman behavior.

[u/Cakelord85]

22.11 dead children a year. They had almost 2 dead children a month, 36 years long.