Past and Present; After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

The Irish Times Vieuw   

11-3-2017

It has been a harrowing week. The images that haunt us are of the bodies of hundreds of babies and toddlers buried in a dishonoured grave in the mother and baby home in Tuam , of “Grace” and other children with disabilities suffering years of abuse in a so-called foster home in the southeast, of three beautiful little children and a young mother consumed in an accidental blaze at a facility for victims of domestic violence in Dublin.

Each of these stories is distressing enough in itself. Coming at the same time, though, they are even more disturbing. For they strip away a layer of illusion with which we have comforted ourselves when confronted with dark truths about our society's appalling treatment of vulnerable and marginalised children: that was then, this is now. We can no longer assure ourselves that all the horror is in the past and that we live in an entirely new Ireland.

In some respects, we have no right to be shocked by the Tuam story. It is, of course, appalling to think of all of those lovely human beings who did not matter enough during their short lives to be given proper care and who did not matter enough in death to be given a decent burial, even by a church that pretended to believe that every individual was equal in the sight of God and that every life was sacred. But the mother and baby homes were not a secret, and they were not isolated institutions. On the contrary, they were part of what we must acknowledge as a massive system of coercive confinement to which Irish society consigned its unwanted people, its human set-aside.

An empire of repression 

The mother and baby home in Tuam was part of an empire of repression that had highly visible outposts in every major Irish town, encompassing industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and mental hospitals. The Catholic Church bears an enormous responsibility for the systematic cruelty and at times the savage violence of much of this system. It promulgated and imposed a twisted idea of sexuality that used shame as a weapon of power and used women and their children as the living exemplars of that shame. The church has never fully faced up to the consequences of this distortion. That it has contributed just €192 million of the €1.5 billion cost so far of the redress scheme for victims of institutional abuse speaks for itself.

But it is a cop-out to see the church as the only root of all this evil. The mental hospitals that were such a vast aspect of the system of repression were not church-run – and we have yet to have any proper accounting for the awful treatment (and early deaths) of so many people in those dreaded institutions.
The truth is that, in a society where church and state have been so intertwined, cruelty to vulnerable people is a deep stain, not just on religious orders but on politicians, governments, civil servants, communities and families. And it is a stain that has continued to spread. Grace is just one more name we have given to a repeated failure to care for the most vulnerable and to equally cherish all our children.

So how do we as a society face our responsibilities? By honouring the dead and protecting the living. The first part needs to be undertaken with dignity and decorum. The dead must be allowed to rest in peace , which means that we should not embark on a series of mass exhumations at every site where children may have been buried. The need is to identify those places, to name those names, to erect the proper memorials.

But it is also to collect and preserve and digitise archives, so that this story is stitched into our national memory. The work of Catherine Corless in Tuam has set a superb example: the Government should establish a properly funded long-term project in which local communities and professional historians can work together to uncover and acknowledge the truths of this terrible system.

Protecting the living

The second part is to protect the living. We would be the worst kind of hypocrites if we wring our hands over the sins of the past while shrugging off the cruelties and injustices in which we are implicated. We too have our open secrets. We know that children with disabilities are often marginalised and rendered voiceless. We know children in direct provision are often living in conditions harmful to their development and that in Dublin alone there are more than 2,000 homeless children who experience similar or worse conditions. We know that children were first in line for the cutbacks of the austerity years, when consistent child poverty almost doubled. We know that there are nearly a thousand “high priority” children at risk who have not even been assigned a social worker.

After such knowledge, as TS Eliot asked, what forgiveness? We cannot easily forgive previous generations who treated some young lives as disposable. The next generation will not easily forgive us if we continue to repeat this dark pattern.

Hallo 'Koninginnedag. Vreselijk gevaarlijk uitziende kinderen op de Dam'

Het Parool  

9 maart 2017 Bien Borren

Zo ziet Ed van der Elskens punker Bep Broodje er nu uit

Halo

RCAU # 51-2 zuster, wilt u uw huisje verkopen?

 # 51 -1 

Opening adress 1 = 6/03/2017

Transcript - 6/03/2017

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Beeld en Geluid

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Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland

IISG

mogelijk [deel]toelichting? 

Diana L. Wolf 

Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. 

ISBN 9780520248106

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The dogged effort of a determined historian in a small Irish town uncovered one of the greatest tragedies in modern Irish history.

5-3-2017

[...]

Corless told the Daily Beast that far from intending to uncover a scandal that looks set to discredit and expose the Catholic Church in Ireland almost as profoundly as the clerical sexual abuse scandals of earlier decades have done, she was simply planning to write an essay for a local journal on the history of ‘the Home’ when she began investigations in  2012.

In the course of her research, she stumbled across an extraordinary story; some boys playing football on the patch of waste ground in the 1970s after the Home had been demolished had accidentally dislodged the lid of an old septic tank.

One fell in. His friend ran to get help. The young woman he fetched also fell in up to her shoulders after the ground gave way.

To their horror, they saw bones and human skulls all around them.

The local people informed, quite naturally, the church. The lid was replaced, the tank covered over, a local cleric came and said a few prayers over the site. The locals were told it was probably a famine grave; and that was that. They were advised to forget all about it.

But the course of events didn’t sit right with some residents on the newly built estate, who erected a small shrine in the corner of the field.

Catherine Corless told the Daily Beast that if it had not been for those residents, the existence of the mass grave might never have reached her ears.

Corless began a series of conversations with former residents of the Home – illegitimate mothers who were sent there to have their babies, and then often kicked out after a year to try and prevent bonding – and began to piece together, along with a disturbing picture of life in the home, an even more disturbing picture of how the Bon Secours nuns dealt with the illegitimate children who died of natural causes.

But try as she might, she couldn’t find an undertaker who had ever buried a child from the home.

"Als ik deze zaak win, kunnen andere geadopteerden veel slagvaardiger dat recht afdwingen"; Mijn adoptie was illegaal, juridische ouders voor de rechter

3-3-2-17 
De Stentor
T. van der Mee

P.,  die in 1980 als Braziliaanse baby illegaal geadopteerd is, heeft vandaag zijn Nederlandse ‘adoptieouders’ voor de rechter gesleept. Hij verwijt ze belangrijke informatie over zijn adoptie te hebben achtergehouden, waardoor ze de jarenlange zoektocht naar zijn biologische moeder ernstig hebben gefrustreerd.

De zaak is uniek , omdat - voor zover bekend - niet eerder een geadopteerde het recht op informatie over zijn geboorte, afkomst en identiteit via de rechter probeert af te dwingen bij zijn adoptieouders. 

,,Ik heb het recht om te weten waar ik vandaan kom, en mijn juridische ouders hebben de plicht om mij te informeren’’, zegt hij.


Volgens het VN-Kinderrechtenverdrag heeft ieder kind na de geboorte recht op inschrijving, een naam, nationaliteit en het recht om zijn of haar ouders te kennen. Zijn rechtszaak kan van groot belang zijn voor veel andere geadopteerden, die informatie willen over hun biologische familie. ,,Nu heb ik geen enkele manier om dat af te dwingen. Als ik deze zaak win, kunnen andere geadopteerden veel slagvaardiger dat recht afdwingen.’’

Complex

bron

Die zoektocht naar de biologische familie is nog complexer voor personen die in de jaren ’70 en ’80 op grote schaal illegaal zijn geadopteerd uit onder meer Latijns-Amerika en Indonesië. Zo ontdekte P dat zijn adoptie onderdeel was van stelselmatige, illegale adoptiepraktijken in Brazilië, uitgevoerd door Nederlandse bemiddelaars en ambtenaren in diplomatieke dienst.

Zijn ‘adoptieouders’ deden met valse getuigen aangifte van de geboorte van hun ‘eigen kind’. Met de valse geboorteakte werden reisdocumenten geregeld, zodat ze met Patrick naar Nederland konden reizen. Ze pleegden een ernstig misdrijf - verduistering van staat – maar werden uiteindelijk niet vervolgd.

Moeilijke positie
Zijn ‘adoptieouders’ ontkennen alle beschuldigingen. ,,Wij hebben hem alle relevante informatie gegeven’’, 
 betoogde de ‘adoptievader’ voor de rechtbank in Den Haag. ,,Meer hadden we niet. Ik erken dat we hem door de illegale adoptie in een heel moeilijke positie hebben gebracht. Tegelijk hebben we er alles aan gedaan om hem te helpen dat gat op te vullen.’’

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Volgens Patrick blijft illegale adoptie mogelijk zolang de geboorteregistratie niet gekoppeld is aan een geboorteakte. Hij heeft de VN gevraagd om dat aan te pakken. ,,Als de geboorteakte pas wordt afgegeven ná bewijs van een betrouwbare geboorteregistratie, kunnen die illegale praktijken niet meer plaatsvinden. Maar het heeft geen prioriteit bij de VN.’’

the fragile days, the hours of pain, the hard work and the labour

96 hours is just four days and not much to get one excited

1939

• Baby Carney 1 day

1944

• Male Murray 1 day
• Female Murray 1 day
• Baby Glynn 1 day
• 
  

and 96 days is merely 3 months, a short time to get all delighted

1925

• Mary Blake 4 months
• Matthew Griffin 3 months

However today we are moving our marks

1952

• John Noone 4 months
• Anne J McDonnell 6 months
• Joseph Anthony Burke 6 months
• Patrick Hardiman 6 months
• Patrick Naughton 12 days
• Josephine T Staunton 21 days
• John Joseph Mills 5 months

1953

• Baby Hastings 1 day
• Mary Donlon 4 months
• Nora Connolly 15 months

1954

• Anne Heneghan 3 months
• Mary Keville 9 months
• Martin Murphy 5 months
• Mary Barbara Murphy 5 months
• Mary P Logue 5 months
• Margaret E Cooke 6 months
• Mary Ann Broderick 14 months
• Ann Marian Fahy 4 months
• Anne Dillon 4 months
• Imelda Halloran 2 years

1955

• Joseph Gavin 10 months
• Marian Brigid Mulryan 10 months
• Mary C Rafferty 3 months
• Nora Mary Howard 4 months
• Joseph Dempsey 3 months
• Patrick Walsh 3 weeks
• Francis M Heaney 3 years

1956

• Dermot Gavin 2 weeks
• Mary C Burke 3 years
• Patrick Burke 1 year
• Paul Henry Nee 5 months
• Oliver Reilly 4 months
• Gerard Connaughton 11 months
• Rose Marie Murphy 2 years

1957

• Margaret Connaire 4 months
• Stephen Noel Browne 2 years
• Baby Fallon 4 days

1958

• Geraldine O’Malley 6 months

1959

• Dolores Conneely 7 months
• Mary Maloney 4 months

the fragile days, the hours of pain, the hard work and the labour

'They were known as the children of sin'

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Tuam resident recalls appalling treatment of 'home babies' who lived in local institution

Irish Times

4-3-2017 

They were known as the “home babies”, and Kevin O'Dwyer says he can still hear the clatter of their hobnail boots on the way to primary school.

O'Dwyer, a retired school principal and longtime resident of Tuam , was reared on the old Athenry road close to the Bon Secours institution.

“We'd hear the boots on the road in the morning,” he says.

”They were always kept back so they wouldn't arrive at school the same time as the rest of us. That also meant they got a slap for being late – every single day.”

“They had to wear uniforms when the rest of us didn't, they were put into separate lines, they had a separate area in the playground, and we never even got to know their names,” he says.

“At age six or seven, they would be taken out and sent to foster homes or industrial school. There were no 'home babies' in any Holy Communion or Confirmation photos. They were looked upon as children of sin.

“One day when I was only about four, I was being bullied in the yard, and one of the 'babies', a buxom girl named Mary Curran , stepped out and told them to stop and leave me alone,” O'Dwyer recalls.

“Every day after that, I played as close as I could to Mary Curran, because she was my saviour . . .”

High walls

O'Dwyer is among many children of the 1950s who grew up in the shadow of a church or State institution where high walls were built to conceal instances of horrific abuse.

“People knew about the home, maybe even knew about a graveyard, but never realised the full extent of what has now been found now,” O'Dwyer says.“There were individual kindnesses shown by families to those children that survived, and that is something that may be forgotten today.”

Bucketing rain, drowning town and county, captured the mood in Tuam yesterday morning, with no one having the heart to complain about the elements as reports confirmed how remains of infants up to three years old had been found.

“And it's where they were found, in structures built for sewerage,” one resident who did not want to be named said. “If you were burying your dog, you'd find a nice tree in your garden.”

“Even the cillini or graveyards for unbaptised children reflect a community's efforts to show respect when the Catholic Church wouldn't,” the resident contiued. “But it is so horrific, and I think we need a lot more information now.”

In the Town Hall, with its imposing clock tower, a handful of people arrived into a hastily convened meeting. Galway County Council community wardens had distributed 200 invitations earlier in the morning to houses in the Dublin road and Tubberjarlath estates, which were built on and around the former home after it closed in 1961.

Estate residents

The meeting was closed to the press, but the county council had issued a statement explaining that it was engaging with the estate residents, and would continue to do so “as they come to terms with the confirmation by the commission of investigation”.

“This is a difficult time for local residents, and the council requests that their right to privacy is respected,” the statement read. “The council recognises that there are varying views as to the most appropriate approach to the site in the future.”

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Local historian Catherine Corless , whose tracing of records into the deaths of almost 800 children in the home led to the commission's excavations, was not at the meeting. Fielding phone calls throughout the day, she expressed a mixture of relief and sadness at the findings.

“It is an enormous relief to have the truth come out about what I knew,” she said. “I can only imagine what the survivors of those who died there must feel, and those who had family connections to the home. The Church and State owes them all an apology,” she said.

“ Minister Zappone phoned me this morning to brief me and she was very emotional – she said that she realised now that when she met me at the excavation site last year, we would have been standing on the top of burials,” Ms Corless said.

One of the home's survivors, Menlough farmer and Eircom employee PJ Haverty, said his thoughts were with his late mother, Eileen.

'Slave'

“I was there for 6½ years before being fostered out, and my mother had spent 12 months there working as a slave for the Bon Secours order,” he said.

“For 5½ years afterwards she was in and out of the town on foot to the mother and babies home, begging for me to be returned to her . . . Eventually she went to England – which broke her heart – and I met her in Brixton in 2010 after my foster parents had passed away.

“I am so happy this is all now coming out in the open, and my three sons feel the same,” he said.

“Deeply traumatised” was how Fine Gael county councillor Peter Rochedescribed the atmosphere at the Town Hall meeting, which he had attended.Notice had been short, and people had been offered the opportunity to be briefed at home, he explained.

“The north Galway coroner will be working very closely with the various agencies, and a decision will be taken on whether to leave the burial site untouched or to have bodies exhumed,” he said.

“There will be a lot of dialogue and consultation with every affected community first, as it is far too complex for any one institution to deal with in isolation.

“It's like there is a huge death in the town today. It's a calamity when you think of such large numbers, but people in Tuam and hinterland had a close attachment to the home,” he said.

“The children whose remains have now been found there were victims of a very dark time in Irish society.”

“I have come to the point where I can no longer be sustained by hope. As a survivor I have watched events unfold with dismay,” Marie Collins

[Marie Collins is a former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.]

I find it impossible to listen to public statements about the deep concern in the church for the care of those whose lives have been blighted by abuse, yet to watch privately as a congregation in the Vatican refuses to even acknowledge their letters! It is a reflection of how this whole abuse crisis in the Church has been handled: with fine words in public and contrary actions behind closed doors.

When I accepted my appointment to the Commission in 2014, I said publicly that if I found what was happening behind closed doors was in conflict with what was being said to the public I would not remain. This point has come. I feel I have no choice but to resign if I am to retain my integrity.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors has had difficulties to overcome in its three years of existence.

Obviously I intend to respect the confidentiality of my former colleagues on the Commission and the work they are doing, but some of the main stumbling blocks that I can mention have already been detailed by Commission members who gave testimony Feb. 23 to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

These stumbling blocks include: lack of resources, inadequate structures around support staff, slowness of forward movement and cultural resistance. The most significant problem has been reluctance of some members of the Vatican Curia to implement the recommendations of the Commission despite their approval by the pope.

In her testimony, Kathleen McCormack, the Commission's Australian member, summed up the struggles and emphasized the need to keep hope. "Like water on a rock," she said, "we've just got to keep at it."

I have come to the point where I can no longer be sustained by hope. As a survivor I have watched events unfold with dismay.

During our first year we had to go forward without an office or staff. Then finding a method by which the Commission could enter into dialogue with Vatican dicasteries was difficult for a very prolonged period.

This was eventually overcome in 2016 when liaison persons for each Vatican department were appointed to be available to interact with the Commission but there was a long delay in this very important area of communication and cooperation.

The Commission’s recommendation for a Tribunal to be put in place whereby negligent bishops could be held accountable was approved by Pope Francis and announced in June 2015. Yet it was found by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as Baroness Sheila Hollins stated to the Royal Commission, to have unspecified "legal" difficulties, and so was never implemented. 

With his motu proprio "As a Loving Mother," Francis followed up last year with another accountability initiative. This would not only cover negligent bishops but also negligent religious superiors. It was to come into effect Sept. 5 but it is impossible to know if it has actually begun work or not.

The Safeguarding Guidelines template developed by the Commission, intended to be used by bishops' conferences around the world as a basis for drawing up their own policy documents has not yet been disseminated. The dicastery which has the responsibility for reviewing existing bishops’ conference policy documents and which has its own template is refusing to cooperate with the Commission on the combining of the work.

In his testimony to the Royal Commission, member Bill Kilgallon from New Zealand, who is the Chair of the Guidelines working group, used the analogy of government to understand how this sort of resistance can come about. He spoke of "how jealously government departments guard their own domain and there can be some pushback about taking advice from others."

The reluctance of some in the Vatican Curia to implement recommendations or cooperate with the work of a commission when the purpose is to improve the safety of children and vulnerable adults around the world is unacceptable.

Is this reluctance driven by internal politics, fear of change, clericalism which instills a belief that 'they know best' or a closed mindset which sees abuse as an inconvenience or a clinging to old institutional attitudes?

I do not know the answer but it is devastating in 2017 to see that these men still can put other concerns before the safety of children and vulnerable adults.

The last straw for me, on top of the refusal to cooperate on the Safeguarding Guidelines, has been the refusal, by the same dicastery, to implement one of the simplest recommendations the Commission has put forward to date.

Last year at our request, the pope instructed all departments in the Vatican to ensure all correspondence from victims/survivors receives a response. I learned in a letter from this particular dicastery last month that they are refusing to do so.

I find it impossible to listen to public statements about the deep concern in the church for the care of those whose lives have been blighted by abuse, yet to watch privately as a congregation in the Vatican refuses to even acknowledge their letters! It is a reflection of how this whole abuse crisis in the Church has been handled: with fine words in public and contrary actions behind closed doors.

When I accepted my appointment to the Commission in 2014, I said publicly that if I found what was happening behind closed doors was in conflict with what was being said to the public I would not remain. This point has come. I feel I have no choice but to resign if I am to retain my integrity.

I know my former colleagues on the Commission will forge on and I hope in time succeed in overcoming the difficulties and bringing the real change that is needed.

There is still a survivor member in the group, though he is on leave of absence. I do not know if when his term of office ends another survivor will be brought on board. I do hope in whatever way things go forward that a survivor's voice will be included.

In the past three years I have never had the opportunity to sit and talk to the pope but if I had I would ask him to do three things: 

1. Give the Commission the responsibility and the power to oversee implementation of the recommendations when they are approved. No matter how much work is put into the recommendations given to the Holy Father and no matter how much he supports them they must be properly implemented to have any effect.
2. Give the Commission an adequate, independent budget to do its work without having each item of expenditure go through the internal Vatican approval process.
3. Remove the restriction on the recruitment of professional staff from outside the Vatican.

Despite everything I have said, I do believe there is value in the Commission continuing its work. The members are sincerely putting every effort into very important projects with the intention of moving things forward.

Notwithstanding recent disappointing news on the reduction of sanctions for convicted perpetrators, I believe the pope does at heart understand the horror of abuse and the need for those who would hurt minors to be stopped.

Although I do not agree with them, as far as I am aware none of his actions have put a perpetrator back into a position where children would be at risk. If they did I would have a very different view.

Those who appeal to his commitment to mercy in these cases do a disservice to all, including the man himself, who I feel does not appreciate how his actions of clemency undermine everything else he does in this area including supporting the work of the Commission.

I wish my former colleagues well as they go forward. The issue of improving safety of children and vulnerable adults is so important it has to continue no matter the stumbling blocks in its path.