The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns [1]

Nuns, Mothers and Babies in Bon Secours Home, Tuam

The final report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy) was due to be delivered to the Government in June but delivery was postponed until 30 October 2020 due to coronavirus. According to the Irish Times  "It was set up following claims that up to 800 babies may have been interred in an unmarked mass grave in the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, Co Galway." That's putting it very mildly. Brendan O'Neill editor of Spiked OnLine gives a flavour of the wordwide hysteria that preceded the establishment of the Commission (June 2004 article The Tuam Tank: Another Myth about Evil Ireland) 

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, declared the Washington Post. ‘800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, said the New York Daily News. ‘Galway historian finds 800 babies in septic tank grave’, said the Boston Globe. ‘The bodies of 800 babies were found in the septic tank of a former home for unwed mothers in Ireland’, cried Buzzfeed. Commentators angrily demanded answers from the Catholic Church. ‘Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves’, said a writer for The Guardian, telling no-doubt outraged readers that ‘the bodies of 796 children… have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway’

I discuss the credibility of three preceding Reports including two chaired by the same Judge Yvonne Murphy.

This is the first in a projected series of three articles on "The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns". Part [2] is HERE and Part [3] HERE

(A) Credibility of Ryan Report (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse), May 2009

The Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy is due to be published shortly. I gave evidence myself to the Ryan Commission (Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse) as part of a delegation from Let Our Voices Emerge. I emphasised the clearly bogus allegations of child murder made by leaders of "Victim" groups against the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. The Ryan Report was published in May 2009 and  I outlined my experience in a letter published in the Irish Examiner on 7 November 2011 Ryan Report Did Not Deal With False Allegations  

The report of the Ryan Commission published in May 2009 makes no reference to these claims of unlawful killing. Originally I thought that the commission had ignored them completely. It now appears that the commission did investigate the allegations in private session, found no evidence to support them and took a deliberate decision to omit them from its published report. I find this reprehensible.

 I did not give evidence to the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese or the Commission of Investigation, Cloyne Diocese - both of which were chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy - Reports published in November 2009 and July 2011 respectively. However the modus operandi of Judge Yvonne Murphy seems to be similar to that of Judge Sean Ryan - including ignoring evidence of false allegations and accepting as true any claim that Church authorities cannot prove false!

(B) Credibility of Murphy Report into Dublin Archdiocese, November 2009

I am not the only one to have such misgivings. This is a Statement by The Association of Catholic Priests in July 2014 on the appointment of Judge Yvonne Murphy to chair the current Commission. 

Statement from the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) responding to the  establishment of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and the appointment of Yvonne Murphy 

The ACP welcomes the establishment of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. It is important that it be carried out competently, justly and in strict accordance with guidelines to be laid down by the government, which should reflect natural and constitutional justice.

The ACP notes the appointment of Judge Yvonne Murphy who chaired the Murphy Commission into abuse in Dublin diocese. It is also important to note that, in view of a report commissioned by the ACP into procedural fairness in that investigation, Fergal Sweeney, an Irish barrister who worked for many years as a judge in Hong Kong, concluded that the Murphy Report contained significant deficiencies in terms of respecting the demands of natural and constitutional justice.

Last October [2013], the ACP published Fergal Sweeney’s findings. His conclusions are on pages 37-39 of his document, which is on this web-site. The final point is as follows:

4.14   However, from the legal perspective it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that insofar as the Catholic clerics who were called to testify were concerned, the practices and procedures of the Murphy Commission fell far short of meeting the concerns of the Law Reform Commission and, more importantly, of natural and Constitutional  justice. 

In the light of the serious failings of the Murphy Commission, the ACP suggests that Fergal Sweeney’s important and robustly argued conclusions should be considered before the terms of reference for the investigation are established and the necessity of following them is accepted.  

Our concerns should not be interpreted as an attack on Judge Murphy, still less an attempt to obstruct the investigation, but a concern that the new Commission of Investigation should have the best possible team to carry out the vital work. 

The ACP is aware that Judge Murphy and the Murphy Commission are legally debarred from any comment once they issued their Report but even though strangely Fergal Sweeney’s study was largely ignored in the media and by the legal profession, it is vital for the credibility of the enquiry that those entrusted with investigating the Mother and Baby Homes should accept and implement the guidelines laid down by the government. This is a matter not just of natural justice but of judicial competence. 

We would also hope that the Commission will avail of the expertise of social scientists, especially anthropologists, to make sure that the cultural prism through which we interpret present reality is not imposed on the past. Here too competent historians must be consulted so that the Commission has an accurate understanding of the historical reality at that period in Irish history and of the various actors who were involved in the wider context of the Mother and Child homes at the time. 

Making the same mistakes twice, when people’s characters and reputations are at stake, would be unconscionable.

A discussion regarding Fergal Sweeney’s report can be found on the ACP website at 

ACP Report on Yvonne Murphy Investigation Published (November 2013)

The text of Fergal Sweeney's 40 page Report is here

A Review from a legal perspective of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 and of the Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (the “Murphy Report”)

Margaret Lee a retired Social Worker and former member of the Sisters of Mercy summarised it thus in the course of the afore-mentioned discussion 

I have read this review and I consider the following to be the salient Points

• 1. The enquiry that led to the Murphy Report was carried out under the 2004 [Commissions of Investigation] Act which was really guided by the Law Reform Commission Report of 2003. This report proposes a low key enquiry that would focus on the malfunction of the system not on the sins of the individual. It was viewed that such an enquiry would not attract the rules of constitutional justice precisely because the focus was to be on the system, not the individual. Two further recommendations of the LRC Report are pertinent: (a) the enquiry was to be held in private –again to protect the good name of the participants and (b) where a participant wished to comment on or disagree with the conclusions of the enquiry, such comments and/or disagreements would be included in the final report—in short both sides of the argument would be recorded. The Murphy Report does not meet the standards set out by the Law Reform because it names and blames individual clerics.

• 2. The legislation itself could be viewed as flawed and the Dail debates at the time foresaw the possibility of a legal challenge. The legislation does not make provision for an enquiry that might find a reason to go beyond the remit of focussing on a system and start adjudicating of individuals. If it had done so, it would surely have written into the legislation the 4 minimum rights which the Supreme Court set down in its Abbeylara judgement–right to know the content of the accusation, to cross examine the accuser, to address the adjudicator through counsel and make a rebuttal. Instead the legislation talks vaguely about “fair procedures” without stating how these fair provisions might be implemented.

• 3. The Murphy Report did not accord natural justice to the clerics who participated. Where there is a difference in the recollections of past events between clerics and professionals it resolves such differences in favour of the professionals and against the cleric and, most significantly, does not give any reason for doing so. The report does not give due consideration to any mitigating circumstances put forward by the clerics. This is particularly obvious in discussing the “learning curve”. The report dismisses out of hand that the clergy were on a learning curve when it came to child sexual abuse but freely acknowledges the existence of such a learning curve in the case of An Garda Siochana and Social workers—or indeed, psychiatrists.

• 4. The LRC places great emphasis on the limitations of any form of enquiry or tribunal when it comes to the administration of justice. It states that an enquiry is not able to carry out a function which belongs to the courts—that of punishment and it warns against the danger of attempting to do so in times of a public outcry.

This review of the Murphy report is not attempting to deny or minimize the wrong that was done to the victims of clerical child abuse. What the review is stating is that the clergy did not get natural justice. It is important to draw attention to this in a week when we have heard a lot of concern about targeting any particular group.

I find the silence of the named Bishops and of the members of the Law Reform Commission at the time of publication puzzling. I assume that the Bishops were terrified of savaging by the media. Why did not the members of the LRC not speak out?.....

Finally, there is no substitute for a formal statement of complaint to An Garda Siochana in the event of sexual assault or any other crime.

(C) Extracts from Discussion that followed ACP Statement on appointment of Yvonne Murphy (July 2014) 

Pádraig McCarthy July 18th, 2014 at 10:24 pm 
At the risk of increasing the task, it is important that the Commission of Investigation do not consider the religious run mother and baby homes in isolation: other such homes, including county homes, must be included. In relation to funding and staffing, the Commission must see how such homes which were funded by the state compare in funding to other kinds of homes, and to the regular maternity hospitals.

The matter of children being sent for adoption, and of children who died being sent to medical schools, must be looked at in all such institutions.

In looking at the matter of how society dealt with non-marital children and their mothers (what about the fathers?), the Commission must look at the context of how other jurisdictions at the time dealt with this. This would include the practice in some places of introducing legislation for the compulsory sterilisation of women in these situations.

In dealing with infant mortality, the Commission must look at how other institutions, including maternity hospitals, dealt with the burial arrangements; and how society at the time dealt with the deaths of small children – this includes the “Holy Angels” plots in many parts of the country as a normal practice. While today, we would see the burial of a child without a funeral rite as cruel and unfeeling, we need to ask how people saw it in the years before and following independence, including the question of whether it was seen as a kindness and help to the bereaved parents. The economic factors are relevant here. Also the fact that stillbirths were not registered here until 1995, so the child would not usually be given a name.

The level of infant mortality in society over those years is clearly important. Where there appears to be a much higher level of mortality of non-marital children, the Commission must look at the health and living conditions of the mothers; the question of poverty is relevant. The Commission must consider the experience in other jurisdictions also, where the level of infant mortality of non-marital children was frequently higher than the level in marital children, and what may be the reasons for this. The contemporary situation could be enlightening here. Also the kind of medical care available, and nutritional factors.

In the matter of adoptions, we must be aware of what was seen as good practice at the time. Often this involved minimising the bonding of the mother and child. Sending children abroad was not just a practice in Ireland: many children were sent from UK to Australia.

To look at international experience is not a way of justifying all that was done; but if we fail to look at the wider picture, we may be in danger of blaming ourselves because we are Irish, and largely Catholic.

I’m sure there are other relevant matters which do not come to mind at present. All in all, as the statement makes clear, it is important that the Commission take the matter in its historical context. This was a matter of serious failure in the Murphy Report.

The Commission must consider whether it can name and shame people they consider to blame: this was a very serious failure and injustice in a Commission of Investigation, as the Sweeney report makes clear.

It will be instructive to see whether this new Commission of Investigation learns from the errors of the past, and whether they pay attention to the study of the Murphy Report produced by Fergal Sweeney.

Rory Connor July 19th, 2014 at 4:03 pm 
One point that Fergal Sweeney did NOT mention is that the Murphy Report on Dublin includes criticism of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid even though he died in in 1973 and the inquiry was supposed to investigate the actions of the Catholic Church in the period 1975 to 2004. 

Also the Report failed to comment on the widely-publicized allegations of pedophilia against the late Archbishop even though these were made in 1999 i.e. WITHIN the period that Judge Murphy was supposed to report on. Could the fact that the allegations were universally rejected as false, have anything to do with this curious omission? The Dublin Archdiocese under Archbishop Desmond Connell, strongly repudiated the claims. Did they really have no effect on the attitudes of senior clergy who had to deal with similar sex claims against Dublin priests?

Judge Murphy’s report on Cloyne also failed to refer to scurrilous allegations against Bishop John Magee for which the UK Guardian was forced to apologise in 1994 and TV3 in 1999. Did Judge Murphy believe that these false allegations had NO effect on how the Bishop would have viewed similar claims against his priests?

The current investigation into Mother and Baby homes was sparked by a world-wide media storm based on claims that the Bon Secour nuns in Tuam had dumped the bodies of dead children into a septic tank. Most of the journalists who published this obscene libel have now quietly dropped it and only a few have had the grace to apologise. I hope that Judge Murphy will not fail to provide a detailed analysis of this fake atrocity story and name those responsible for creating it.

Dr Margaret Kennedy July 20th, 2014 at 9:34 am
 
It seems to me that the ACP despite its claim not to want to “attempt to obstruct the investigation” is in fact, conveying from day one that Judge Yvonne Murphy needs to brush up on her "practices and procedures" or even is "not suitable"  which from my perspective is disrespectful and does not fill me with admiration. Such enquiries are always limited by resources, information lost, not given (!) and in the end humanity and one’s human fallibility. I suspect some clergy did not equip themselves well in that enquiry! One could unpick most inquiries as ‘deficient’.


It further seems to me that the ACP wants to highlight the ‘unfairness’ of the Murphy Commission i.e. being allegedly ‘unfair’ towards clergy rather than hope that justice will be served to women and children incarcerated in ‘mother and baby homes’ and the subsequent (often) blighted lives of these women and children. That the ACP take this defensive clergy stance continues to present the Catholic Church as an institution largely only of benefit to clergy themselves! When Clergy begin to see the deficiencies of it’s OWN institution rather than point out the log in another’s eye, then will lay people subjected to the horrors of past Catholicism receive justice. I suspect that most of the Murphy Commission painted an accurate picture of victims abuse and the ACP statement above seeks to damn it whole and entire thus almost calling victims ‘liars’. Have we not endured enough of this clericalism? Now could the ACP speak/say something about the Women and Children who suffered in Mother and Baby Homes?

Pádraig McCarthy July 20th, 2014 at 1:19 pm 
Dr Margaret Kennedy 
Lessons need to be learned from the Murphy Commission – precisely because of deficiencies clearly identified by Fergal Sweeney, and also in my book Unheard Story. The ACP and Fergal Sweeney and I have been careful to recognise explicitly the valuable work done by the Commission. We are greatly concerned that justice be done for those who were abused, and for all concerned in the mother and baby homes.

The ACP itself is not a perfect association, and is very much aware of serious failings in the Church. The ACP certainly does not take a defensive stance in this regard.

It is not true to write, as you do, that “the ACP statement above seeks to damn [the Murphy Commission] whole and entire thus almost calling victims ‘liars’.” This cannot be found anywhere in any statement from the ACP; nor is it in Fergal Sweeney’s document; nor is it in my book.

This is not at all incompatible with bringing to attention deficiencies in the Murphy Report. One does not correct one injustice by inflicting another injustice. The points made by Fergal Sweeney in his document are the points to address: this is what is at issue here. The really strange thing is that the media and the political establishment have not so far addressed the matters raised by Fergal Sweeney.

Your work has been valuable in bringing public attention to abuse. It is understandable that any person who has experience of abuse, as you have, would be wary of anything that may seem to downgrade the appalling abuse which is well documented in the Murphy Report. It is vital that we hold on to that, and at the same time not fail to address failures in procedural fairness in the work of the Commission. This is not an attempt to exculpate anyone.

It is because the ACP wants the full story of the mother and baby homes to be made clear that the statement was issued. The media have backed away very much from initial sensational reports. As the ACP statement says: “It is important that it be carried out competently, justly and in strict accordance with guidelines to be laid down by the government, which should reflect natural and constitutional justice.” If there were deficiencies in the Murphy Report, as I believe Fergal Sweeney shows, then, indeed, “Making the same mistakes twice, when people’s characters and reputations are at stake, would be unconscionable.”

Joe O'Leary July 21st, 2014 at 11:50 am
 What one would like to see in a new Murphy report is a deeper sense of historical perspective, setting the work of the sisters who ran mother and child homes, Magdalene laundries, etc., in the context of the demands of society at the time. Even the shaming and shunning of unmarried mothers alleged to be a uniquely Catholic outlook could be put in perspective — unmarried mothers were not viewed benignly anywhere. As Fintan O’Toole points out, the vast amount of secret abortions that is our current solution to unwanted pregnancies bespeaks similar attitudes which have not gone away even though no longer connected with Catholic notions of guilt and sin. And it would also be nice if the next Murphy report recorded also the positive things people had to say about the sisters. If demonizing indignation is allowed to set the tone of the new report, as it in part set the tone of the Dublin and Cloyne reports, it will only undercut its reliability as work of historical reference.

Pádraig McCarthy July 29th, 2014 at 9:41 am 
Vincent Twomey has a good article in the Irish Times today (29 July) on the Opinion page, expressing similar reservations about how the Commission of Investigation may be influenced by its composition.
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission
Opinion: Appointment of judge to chair body raises expectation of criminal findings

Eddie Finnegan July 29th, 2014 at 1:28 pm 
The interesting Opinion piece by Vincent Twomey in this morning’s Irish Times perhaps goes a step further than the ACP Statement and other substantial comments above. He asks, not just “Why Judge Yvonne Murphy?”, but why any judge as chairman of the mother-and-baby home inquiry? Like several of the contributors above, he asks why the narrow concentration “primarily on the mother-and-child homes run by Catholic religious congregations together with one Protestant-run home”. He also wonders whether the commission will enquire into the sensationalist media coverage of the original Tuam story.
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission

Perhaps Vincent can hope for a fairer hearing from commenters on this forum than from the often rabid online commentariat the Irish Times now permits or even encourages. If they don’t permit such mindless anonymous or pseudonymous rubbish in their Letters Page, why leave serious contributors open to it online?


Rory Connor August 4th, 2014 at 12:34 am 
Fr. Vincent Twomey’s article in the Irish Times on 29 July raises a couple of very important issues
What’s Wrong with the Proposed Mother and Babies Home Commission

“Should the commission uncover grave misdeeds, even criminal actions, natural justice demands each instance be dealt with according to due procedures, all of which are predicated on the presumption of innocence. Malicious accusations against “the nuns” by some public commentators have been deeply offensive, not least to today’s aged Sisters, who, with depleted human resources, continue to provide unsung service to the marginalised in Ireland, which the State cannot provide. ……

“Finally, it would be a welcome development if the commission were to devote some attention to the media’s coverage of the initial Tuam story. How did such sensationalist coverage affect the women and children themselves – and those who provided service in the homes? What further hurt did it cause?”

The purveyors of ludicrous atrocity stories about the Bon Secour nuns have now largely gone silent – at least on the allegations that actually can be TESTED. So it may be helpful to remind ourselves of what they originally wrote: 

‘Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, declared the Washington Post. ‘800 skeletons of babies found inside tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers’, said the New York Daily News. ‘Galway historian finds 800 babies in septic tank grave’, said the Boston Globe. ‘The bodies of 800 babies were found in the septic tank of a former home for unwed mothers in Ireland’, cried Buzzfeed. Commentators angrily demanded answers from the Catholic Church. ‘Tell us the truth about the children dumped in Galway’s mass graves’, said a writer for the Guardian, telling no-doubt outraged readers that ‘the bodies of 796 children… have been found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway’. ……. 

The foregoing details are from Brendan O’Neill’s article on the SpikedOnLine website and he also comments that 

A hysterical piece in the Irish Independent compared the Tuam home to the Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda and Srebrenica, saying that in all these settings people were killed ‘because they were scum’ 

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-tuam-tank-another-myth-about-evil-ireland/15140#.U9muh9J4xjs

Brendan O’Neill is an atheist. Yet his article is entitled “The Tuam Tank: Another Myth about Evil Ireland” and the subtitle is “The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged.” Compare this to Fr Brian D’Arcy’s article in the Sunday World on 10 June entitled “Fr Brian: Baby Graves are Our Greatest Crime” that includes the following
http://www.sundayworld.com/top-stories/columnists/fr-brian-d-arcy/fr-brian-baby-graves-are-our-greatest-crime

“When I first heard the news that more than 800 babies were buried in what was formerly a septic tank I was astonished – because initially I thought it happened in some famine-stricken country today. Then I thought I was hearing about Nazi Germany…..” etc etc

When the Commission of Investigation eventually issues its Report, will it even mention these fake atrocity stories that shamed us world-wide? Or will the Report ignore every allegation that is OBVIOUSLY false while accepting as true any claim that the nuns cannot PROVE is a lie? I strongly suspect the latter. After all, that is what happened in all previous investigations of this type!

Fr Brian D'Arcy [My comment dated 17 August 2020]

The above-mentioned Sunday World article by Father D'Arcy is no longer online but a shorter version is available  in the Irish Examiner dated 5 June 2014 entitled Disposal of babies' bodies in Tuam 'as bad as Nazi Germany': Fr Brian Darcy 

Well-known cleric Fr Brian Darcy has said the discovery of almost 800 babies bodies next to a Galway mother and baby home is as bad as anything that happened in Nazi Germany.

The Government has today confirmed that a "scoping exercise" is underway to determine whether other mass graves such as that found in Tuam exist in other parts of the country.

Fr Brian Darcy said he thought previous scandals involving the Church had left him "unshockable", but that this was a shocking as something that happened in Germany during World War II.

He added that people needed to be brought to justice for "sinful crimes". "I think if the facts are as bad as they seem to be, and I have no reason to doubt that, I think this will cause a massive revolution about the kind of country that we had and the kind of country that we're all children of."

(Helpful key words after the article include "Nazi Germany" and "World War II")