Blood Libel in Canada - Church Burning and Graves of Indigenous Children at former Residential Schools

 

Catholic Church Burns in Morinville, Alberta

(A) Introduction - "Hate Crime" in Canada and Ireland

Over the past two months I experienced one of my periodic episodes of Writer's Block but I can't ignore the current hysteria in Canada. It's their equivalent of "Blood Libel in Ireland - directed against Catholics not Jews" complete with support from politicians and media and some "Survivor" leaders who have already made claims so absurd that said politicians and journalists will quietly ignore them in future! (In Ireland no one in authority now pretends to believe that Christine Buckley was beaten so badly by Sr Xavieria that she needed 100 stitches OR that the same nun used a hot poker to murder a baby!)  

The foregoing essay on Blood Libel concentrates mainly on the Christian Brothers - allegedly beating boys to death in residential schools. Since 2010 however the focus has shifted to nuns who ran Mother and Baby Homes for single mothers and allegedly starved babies to death. I covered this in my article "Deaths of Children in Mother and Baby Care Homes (did they die of starvation?)"

It would not surprise me if the Canadian witch-hunt follows a similar course to ours i.e. with the more lurid child-killing claims being broadcast by media and politicians - and then quietly side-lined -, to be followed by more "moderate" allegations that are difficult to disprove several decades later!

One way in which the Canadian hysteria differs from ours is that about a dozen Catholic churches have already been vandalised or burned to the ground. There has been some vandalism of Church buildings and monuments in Ireland but nothing on that level. However  our last EU Commissioner and our last Minister for Justice used Parliamentary Privilege to libel a woman because she had been a nun while a previous Justice Minister endorsed a claim (in 2009) that the Church was involved in the unsolved murder of a girl in 1970. This kind of libel is the spiritual equivalent of the Nazi Kristallnacht. In Canada they are going in for a more physical imitation!

Interior view of the destroyed Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, 1938

(B) UK Guardian Endorses Blood Libel

On 21 June 2021 The Guardian published an article headlined "Canada Must Reveal ‘Undiscovered Truths’ of Residential Schools to Heal" with subheading "The man who led the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission insists an independent investigation into decades of abuse of Indigenous children is essential."

 It includes the following:

Murray Sinclair, a former senator and one of the country’s first Indigenous judges, warned that the “undiscovered truths” of the schools are probably far more devastating than many Canadians realize – including the deliberate killing of children by school staff and the likelihood that such crimes were covered up.

Sinclair called for a powerful investigative body, free of government interference, and with the power to subpoena witnesses. “We need to know who died, we need to know how they died, we need to know who was responsible for their deaths or for their care at the time that they died,” said Sinclair, a member of the Peguis First Nation. “We need to know why the families weren’t informed. And we need to know where the children are buried.”

And also: 

Justin Trudeau described the graves as “a shameful reminder” of the systemic racism that Indigenous peoples still endure, adding: “Together, we must acknowledge this truth, learn from our past, and walk the shared path of reconciliation, so we can build a better future.”

But Sinclair warned that reconciliation requires a sustained effort to change by ordinary Canadians and powerful institutions of state – an effort that has so far remained elusive. "The government, our social institutions, and even our population acknowledge what was done to Indigenous people was wrong. There have been several apologies and a promise of things will change. But there’s been no change,” he said. “So long as any change is only given reluctantly, it means there remains a willingness, ability – and even desire – to go back to the way things were.”

Sinclair led a historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission which in 2015 concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide.  [1]

But now he is suggesting MORE than "cultural" genocide:

“We’ve heard stories from survivors who witnessed children being put to death, particularly infants born in the schools who had been fathered by a priest. Many survivors told us that they witnessed those children, those infants, being either buried alive or killed – and sometimes being thrown into furnaces,” said Sinclair, who oversaw thousands of hours of testimony. “Those stories need to be checked out.” [2]

The last Indigenous Residential School closed over 30 years ago but remarkably many problems persist among First Nations groups - including unnatural deaths:

Dozens of First Nations do not have access to drinking water, the government is fighting a human rights tribunal order to compensate Indigenous children who suffered in foster care and a federal minister has admitted racism against Indigenous peoples is rampant within the healthcare system. Indigenous people are overrepresented in federal prisons and Indigenous women are killed at a rate far higher than other groups.

Such realities are the result of a sustained campaign to create and sustain racial inequity, said Sinclair. "It took constant effort to maintain that relationship of Indigenous inferiority and white superiority,” he said. “To reverse that, it’s going to take generations of concerted effort to do the opposite.

So WHO is killing Indigenous women and what effect is casting the blame on Racism and White Superiority going to have on efforts to resolve the problem?

US Media also do Blood Libel

An article in the New York Post dated 12 July 2021 is headed US Media Shamefully Justified a String of Canadian Church Burnings

“Discovery of Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Prompts Grief and Questions” ran a Washington Post headline. “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada” was The New York Times’ headline.

Those headlines were false — according to all three chiefs who made the discoveries. “This is not a mass grave site, this is just unmarked graves,” Cowessess First Nation chief Cadmus Delorme said of the biggest site. Indeed, the remains aren’t even believed to be all of children. A band leader said the site was a community cemetery, including graves of nonindigenous people — unmarked because wooden markers had decomposed.

The Washington Post eventually corrected “mass grave”; the Times’ headline remains.

Church critics used that framing to justify, and even encourage, the rash of arsons. “Burn it all down,” tweeted the head of the BC Civil Liberties Association and the chair of the Newfoundland Canadian Bar Association Branch. “It’s very dangerous to conflate the string of church fires with violence against mosques,” activist Nora Loreto said, insisting they weren’t “hate crimes” — in other words, the Catholic Church had it coming.

(C) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Church Burning is "Understandable"

According to Brian Lilley, political correspondent for the Toronto Sun in Trudeau Explains Away Arson Attacks on Churches (Monday, 5 July 2021)

About a dozen churches have been set on fire, some simply damaged, others burned right to the ground. Even more Christian churches — mostly Catholic but not exclusively — have been vandalized over the past several weeks. Yes, it’s true that Justin Trudeau has also said that the burning and destruction of churches is “unacceptable and wrong,” but by saying it is also “understandable,” the PM undermines his mild condemnation of what is going on.

Trudeau only spoke of what has been happening on July 2, almost three weeks after this spate of attacks on churches started. The first arson that I heard of — that was related to the discovery of unmarked graves at residential school sites — was St. John’s Tuscaroras, an Anglican chapel set ablaze on June 12.

Since then, several Catholic churches, a number of Anglican parishes, and Evangelical churches serving African and Vietnamese immigrant communities have been targeted. If there were attacks like this taking place at Mosques or other places of worship, then we know that Trudeau would have tweeted right away, issued statements, and rightly denounced the attacks as hate crimes.

Instead, even when asked, Trudeau can’t use that phrase and his condemnations come with what amounts to a “yeah, but” at the end of it. “It is unacceptable and wrong that acts of vandalism and arson are being seen across the country, including against Catholic churches,” Trudeau said on Friday. It’s a rather weak denunciation, but then he made it worse by saying that what has happened is understandable.

“I understand the anger that’s out there against the federal government, against institutions like the Catholic Church. It is real, and it’s fully understandable, given the shameful history that we are all becoming more and more aware of and engaging ourselves to do better as Canadians,” Trudeau said.

On Monday, Trudeau said that vandalism and arson aren’t the way to go, that it doesn’t help with reconciliation. He’s right, but he still can’t use the kind of language he would use for any other faith group. “That is simply not right, it is a shame,” Trudeau said of burning churches when asked if these acts were hate crimes.

By his own definition, these arsons and acts of vandalism would be hate crimes, but he can’t say that. So instead, he calls it “a shame.” He may as well have added a “tut-tut” at the end and a finger wag.

If mosques were vandalised or burned to the ground in the wake of  an Islamic atrocity, would Justin Trudeau wait for weeks before issuing any kind of condemnation - and would he then use the word "understandable"?   

(D) Head of British Columbia Civil Liberties Group Tweets ‘Burn It All Down’ 

In an article in Global News on 4 July Head of B.C. civil liberties group under fire over ‘burn it all down’ tweet Simon Little wrote - in relation to a Canadian equivalent of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties:

The executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is facing criticism over comments she made on social media in response to the burning of multiple churches in the wake of the discovery of human remains in unmarked graves at former residential schools.

Harsha Walia leads the organization, which fights for civil liberties and human rights. She is also a long-time advocate for migrant justice, Indigenous rights, equality and economic justice.

In a June 30 tweet responding to a news article about a pair of Catholic churches burning down, Walia wrote “burn it all down.” The tweet set off a firestorm on social media, both from people who described the message as inflammatory and stoking hate, and others who defended the tweet, saying people have no right to police Indigenous people’s grief and rage...

B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said he felt the tweet went too far. “I thought it was just disgusting and reprehensible that somebody who heads up an organization like that would make such comments,” he said. “It’s vile beyond belief, it does nothing to bring about reconciliation. All it does is create conflict and division.”

When Terry Glavin, columnist for the National Post and Ottawa Citizen, took a swipe at people defending Harsha Walia, Gerald Butts - former right-hand man and confidant of Justin Trudeau-  jumped in to defend Walia. 

"So Gerry, defending the 'burning churches is cool' crowd?” Glavin tweeted to Butts.

“No Terry, it is not. Though it may be understandable,” Butts replied. Same word used by Trudeau! [3]

About the only thing that surprises me concerning the whole disgusting affair, is the comment by Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth! Otherwise it's a carbon copy of the behaviour of politicians and "human rights" groups in Ireland.

(E) "Unmarked Graves" at former St Eugene Mission School, Cranbrook, British Columbia (1912-1970)

The "discovery" of these graves was one of the episodes that sparked hysteria and Church-burning across Canada in recent weeks. Unfortunately for the hysterics, this one is a cemetery that has been in continuous use by the local community before and since the Mission School closed half a century ago! 

Note there is nothing suspicious about the "unmarked graves". Even in a cemetery that has been in continuous use, old wooden grave markers decay and the cemetery fence has to be replaced. In cemeteries that are no longer used, both markers and fence would eventually disappear. "Using a wooden marker at a gravesite remains a practice that continues to this day in many Indigenous communities across Canada." The following article also points out that it was Government policy that all indigenous children in the area between the ages of 7 and 15 should attend the school. Some children died of "TB or other diseases" according to former Chief Sophie Pierre, who herself attended the school, but  she lends no support to the lurid claims of Murray Sinclair. [Part (B) above]

An article by Adam MacVicar in Global News on 1st July 2021 is entitled: 

‘We Knew It Was There’: Former B.C. Chief says Unmarked Graves near Cranbrook Need More Context

The detection of human remains in unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in B.C. was not an unexpected discovery, according to the area’s former chief. On Wednesday, it was confirmed that ground-penetrating radar found 182 unmarked graves in a cemetery at the site of the former Kootenay Residential School at St. Eugene Mission just outside Cranbrook, B.C. The remains were found when remedial work was being performed in the area to replace the fence at the cemetery last year.

Sophie Pierre, former chief of the St Mary’s Indian Band and a survivor of the school itself, told Global News that while the news of the unmarked graves had a painful impact on her and surrounding communities, they had always known the graves were there. 

“There’s no discovery, we knew it was there, it’s a graveyard,” Pierre said. “The fact there are graves inside a graveyard shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.” According to Pierre, wooden crosses that originally marked the gravesites had been burned or deteriorated over the years.  Using a wooden marker at a gravesite remains a practice that continues to this day in many Indigenous communities across Canada.

The cemetery sits about 150 meters from the former residential school, which was in operation between 1912 and 1970. It is now a luxurious golf resort owned by five local area bands. At the time it was mandated by law that all Indigenous children living in the area between the ages of seven and 15 were to attend the school. ...

Pierre said while there is a possibility there are some children who attended the school were buried in the cemetery, more work is required to confirm those details. “There could very well be, and in good likelihood, some children that were in the residential school that died here because of TB or other diseases, and were buried there,” Pierre said. “But it’s a graveyard.”....

The graveyard near Cranbrook originally dates back to Christian missionaries who settled in the area in the early 1800s, prior to the construction of the school.  A church and a hospital were also built in the area. It eventually became a graveyard for the community, which it remains to this day. “We just buried one of our people there last month,” Pierre said. “Anyone who died in my community would be buried there.” 

The article goes on to point out that hundreds of unmarked graves, many believed to be children, have been found near residential school sites across the country recently, including in Kamloops, British Columbia, and the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan.

[Sophie] Pierre acknowledged uncovering those graves is important work, and sheds light on the traumatic history and reality for Indigenous peoples across Canada. However, she said the findings at the cemetery near Cranbrook isn’t the same as the other findings at other residential schools throughout the country. "What happened in these other places is these remains have been found not in graveyards, that’s the big difference,” Pierre said. “It’s horrible.”

 Or alternatively these are graveyards that have not been used for several decades so the wooden crosses and the cemetery fence have rotted away!   

 (F) CONCLUSION: Canada - A Society Spewing on Itself!

It isn't only the Catholic Church that is under attack from the Justin Trudeau equivalent of Mao's Red Guards! It is also the first Prime Minister of Canada John A McDonald and Methodist Minister Egerton Ryerson who was one of the founders of the Canadian public school system and the Indian residential school system. On the other hand, Justin Trudeau - the Prime Minister who feels that the burning of Catholic Churches is "understandable" - faces no questions about the role of his father Pierre Trudeau who wanted to eliminate Indian Status and fully assimilate First Nations into the general population of Canada! [4]

Egerton Ryerson (24 March 1803 – 19 February 1882) was a Canadian educator and Methodist minister who was a prominent contributor to the design of the Canadian public school system and the Canadian Indian residential school system. In 1844, Ryerson was appointed Chief Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada. In that role, he supported reforms such as creating school boards, making textbooks more uniform, and making education free. Because of his contributions to education in Ontario, he is the namesake of Ryerson University (Toronto), Ryerson Press, and Ryerson, Ontario.

On June 1, 2021, following the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the Egerton Ryerson statue at Ryerson University was vandalized  with red paint. On June 6, the statue was toppled, decapitated and thrown into Toronto Harbour; Ryerson University stated that the statue will not be restored or replaced. The head of the statue was subsequently placed on a pike at the Six Nations of the Grand River near Caledonia, Ontario.

In an article in the National Post on 6 April 2021 Ron Stagg, Professor of History  and Patrice Dutil, Professor of Politics at Ryerson University wrote : Egerton Ryerson has been Falsely Accused of Trying to Erase Indigenous Culture 

Ryerson is being misjudged. He was not a racist and he did not discriminate against Indigenous people. It was the exact opposite! As a young man he was appointed to the Credit mission, home of the Mississaugas. He learned their language, worked in the fields with the people of the settlement and became a life-long friend of future chief Kahkewaquonaby (Sacred Feathers), known in English as Peter Jones.

In fact, it was in recognition of his services to the Mississauga, that Ryerson was adopted and given the name of a recently deceased chief, “Cheechock” or “Chechalk.”

After he left the Credit mission, Ryerson kept in touch with Peter Jones. In the 1830s he assisted the Mississaugas, whose land was confiscated by colonial authorities, by approaching Queen Victoria personally through back channels. He also advanced the careers of a number of talented Indigenous individuals. When Peter Jones was gravely ill at the end of his life, he stayed in the comfortable home of his old friend Ryerson in Toronto. Ryerson was a friend of Indigenous people.

It is also wrong to blame Egerton Ryerson for creating residential schools. It was Peter Jones, working with another prominent Methodist, who argued that the government should fund schools to educate Indigenous men in the new techniques in agriculture, so that they might survive in a colony where land to hunt and fish freely was rapidly disappearing. By 1842, the authorities accepted the concept, as a way to put First Nations on farms and to eliminate the expense of annual treaty payments, not as a way to assimilate them.

In 1846, government agents met with thirty chiefs, representing most of the First Nations in what is now southern Ontario. After some discussion, almost all the leaders agreed that such schools were necessary, and many even agreed to use part of their treaty payments to help support the schools. A year later, the government approached Ryerson, an acknowledged expert on education, and asked him to provide a curriculum for schools that would train Indigenous people for a settled life.

Ryerson was fully in agreement with the plan because he worried that Indigenous communities would be destroyed unless they changed their economic life. He delivered general suggestions for a curriculum — nothing else — that were typical of his day. It was patronizing, as it was based on Euro-Canadian models, but it had the support of most of the Indigenous leaders. Ryerson participated precisely because he saw education as the best instrument to protect First Nations from advancing settlement.

The Ryerson statue was originally vandalised on July 18, 2020 - in addition to two others of John A. Macdonald (first Prime Minister of Canada) and King Edward VII at the Ontario Legislature – as part of a demand to tear down the monuments. Black Lives Matter Toronto claimed responsibility for the actions stating that "The action comes after the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario have failed to take action against police violence against Black people." Three people were arrested at the time and were each charged with three counts of mischief and conspiracy to commit a summary offence. The charges were dropped on 4 June 2021 and demonstrators tore down the Ryerson statue on 6 June! Ryerson University has stated that the statue will not be restored or replaced!

Egerton Ryerson and Jesuit Hero Jean de Brebeuf S.J.  

Egerton Ryerson working among the Mississauga First Nation in the 19th century was - in a way - continuing the work of Jesuit hero, martyr and saint Jean de Brebeuf among the Hurons [Wyandot] in the far more violent age of "New France" in the 17th century. (It's true that Fr de Brebeuf would not have appreciated the comparison!)

Brébeuf had been chosen for the New World because he had a knack for languages, and so was well equipped for engagement with an altogether alien culture. The assignment proved a wise one, as Brébeuf immersed himself deeply among the Wyandot, or Huron, a tribal confederacy that had gathered on the north shores of Lake Ontario two centuries before. From 1626, the Jesuit père devoted himself as the apostle to the Hurons, with the singular mission of making these people Catholic.

Jean and his companions reached Quebec on June 19, 1625, and immediately began to prepare for his journey to the Huron nation. Happily, he had a great talent for something that would prove critical in his work. The great explorer Samuel de Champlain wrote about Brébeuf, "He had such a striking gift for languages that…he grasped in two or three years what others would not learn in twenty." 

That facility would assist him in working with a people with whom he shared little in common, save their common humanity. To enter into their world Jean resolved to do everything according to their customs, no matter how strenuous, eating their food, sleeping as they did, working as hard as they did. Here is a powerful echo of the Call of the King, from the Spiritual Exercises, in which one is asked to "labor as Christ labors." 

In addition to learning their customs and beliefs, Jean wrote a Huron grammar and translated a catechism in the local language. Brébeuf would spend three years among these families before being asked to return to Rouen in 1629, after political difficulties made it harder for the French to remain.......

When he returned to New France in 1635, he was cheerfully welcomed by his Huron friends. Immediately he and Antoine Daniel, another Jesuit, began their work in earnest. (They were one of several Jesuits working in the region at the time.) Near a town called Ihonotiria, near current-day Georgian Bay in Canada, Fathers Brébeuf and Daniel began teaching the people about Christianity. They were later joined by two other French Jesuits, Charles Garnier and Isaac Jogues.....

Brébeuf and his fellow Jesuits ministered to the Wyandot another 13 years. Then, under military pressure from the northward-moving Iroquois, the Wyandot and their Jesuit companions found themselves in dire straits. Finally, as the invading Iroquois sacked the mission village of Saint-Louis, Brébeuf and fellow priest Gabriel Lalemant were taken captive and tortured to death.

 Justin Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau and "Assimilation" Policy 

An Editorial in the National Catholic Register on 9 July 2021 entitled Canada’s Trudeau Fans the Flame of Blame reads in part

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swiftly joined with Native leaders in demanding that Pope Francis apologize for the Church’s role in operating the majority of these residential schools during the 19th and 20th centuries. This misguided rhetoric of blame has now escalated into the burning down and vandalization of a number of Catholic churches across Canada.....

However, it is simply not the case that Canada’s Catholics and other Christians lagged behind the nation’s political leadership in terms of renouncing assimilationist policies. 

As recently as 1969, the Canadian government formally advocated a new policy abolishing separate status for its Indigenous residents for the express purpose of integrating them more fully into Canadian society. This proposal was abandoned only after fierce resistance from the Native peoples themselves. The Canadian prime minister who advanced this proposed new policy was actually Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, a man still widely regarded in Canada for enlightened, progressive thinking. So if Justin Trudeau truly believes in the concept of “inherited” institutional guilt, as he appears to do with respect to Pope Francis, in fairness it ought to be noted that his own inheritance is vastly more tangible than that of the Holy Father. [4]

The first Canadian Prime Minister John A MacDonald also approved the assimilationist approach proposed in the 1879  "Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds". Thus (as per Wikipedia) - On 18 June 2021, following the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, the statue of Macdonald was removed from [Kingston's] City Park after city council voted 12–1 in favour of its removal, and is set to be installed at Cataraqui Cemetery where Macdonald is buried. [5]

In fact the Canadian secular authorities would always have been keener on assimilating the First Nations than Churchmen like Fr Jean de Brebeuf S.J. and Methodist Minister Egerton Ryerton. For the latter, making good citizens would have been a by product of making good Christians and not the main objective!

A Final Irony

It's quite possible that Pierre Trudeau was correct in 1969 and that the policy began by Fr Jean de Brebeuf in the 17th century and continued by Egerton Ryerson in the 19th had come to the end of its useful life. It's possible that assimilation as ordinary Canadian citizens WAS the way for the First Nations to go. There has been a huge increase in symptoms of social breakdown since then - violence, addiction, suicide and child abuse - more so than in the general population. The Canadian State's pursuit of multi-culturalism has led them to subsidise a culture and  away of life that is no longer viable. 

The same can be said about Ireland in relation to our treatment of the Travellers. Up until the 1960s the policy of the Irish State was to integrate them (then called Tinkers) into the settled population. Since then we also have stressed the multi-cultural approach - up to granting Ethnic Minority status in 2017. The results - in terms of crime and other symptoms of social breakdown - are not pretty!

NOTES:

[1] A Guardian article dated 2 June 2015 headed Canada's Indigenous Schools Policy Was 'Cultural Genocide', says Report summarises the Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Murray Sinclair who is described as "a Manitoba judge whose parents and grandparents both survived residential schools." After seven years of hearings, and testimony from thousands of witnesses, the commission’s final report declares.

 “These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will. The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”

There is no mention of infants being buried alive or killed and thrown into furnaces. Did Murray Sinclair ignore such testimonies back then because he regarded them as incredible? Why does he think they are credible now? 

[2] "We’ve heard stories from survivors who witnessed children being put to death, particularly infants born in the schools who had been fathered by a priest. Many survivors told us that they witnessed those children, those infants, being either buried alive or killed – and sometimes being thrown into furnaces,” said Sinclair. 

This is strongly reminiscent of the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836) in which the author claimed to expose the systematic sexual abuse of nuns by Catholic priests and the infanticide of the resulting children in a convent in Montreal (although "Maria Monk" claimed the babies were strangled after being baptised, and then buried in a lime pit).

[3] See LILLEY: Trudeau pal Gerald Butts also calls church burning 'understandable'

[4] As per the Wikipedia article on Pierre Trudeau

In 1969, Trudeau along with his then Minister of Indian Affairs Jean Chrétien, proposed the 1969 White Paper (officially entitled Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian policy). Under the legislation of the White Paper, Indian Status would be eliminated. First Nations Peoples would be incorporated fully into provincial government responsibilities as equal Canadian citizens, and reserve status would be removed imposing the laws of private property in indigenous communities. Any special programs or considerations that had been allowed to First Nations people under previous legislation would be terminated, as the special considerations were seen by the Government to act as a means to further separate Indian peoples from Canadian citizens. This proposal was seen by many as racist and an attack on Canada's aboriginal population. The Paper proposed the general assimilation of First Nations into the Canadian body politic through the elimination of the Indian Act and Indian status, the parcelling of reserve land to private owners, and the elimination of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The White Paper prompted the first major national mobilization of Indian and Aboriginal activists against the federal government's proposal, leading to Trudeau setting aside the legislation.

[5] See Sir John A. Macdonald statue removed from Kingston’s City Park including 

"Now our people can heal, all those residential school survivors can heal, all those 60’s Scoop people can finally heal.” Kingston resident Lisa Cadue said.

Or alternatively Canada may experience endless outbreaks of Victim Playing!

Proposed Restorative (Redress) Scheme for Former Residents of Mother and Baby Homes

 

Minister for Children, Roderic O'Gorman

OAK Consulting

c/o Department of Children, Equality and Youth

Block 1, Miesian Plaza

50-58 Baggot St Lower

Dublin 2

With reference to the "Restorative Recognition Scheme" I note that "Submissions are being invited from former residents, their families, advocacy and representative groups and other interested parties." I am definitely an "interested party". I was a De La Salle Brother from 1966 to 1969 and details of my background are in the article "The Reason Why: Brother Maurice Kirk and I" on my Blog IrishSalem.Blogspot.com. I believe that nearly every one of my former colleagues who worked in an Industrial School or similar institution was accused of child abuse and if I had done so myself, I'm sure I would have been accused also. Hate Speech from the media plus the almost evidence-free payouts from the previous Redress Board, encouraged people to lie. I am therefore concerned that there is going to be a repetition of the previous fiasco.

(A) Richard Webster regarding our previous Redress Scheme

I corresponded for years with the late UK cultural historian Richard Webster on the issue of false allegations and the Irish Redress Board. I gave him the material regarding Ireland that he included in his book "The Secret of Bryn Estyn - The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt" - a work that mainly concerns a child abuse panic in North Wales but also material on similar bouts of hysteria in other countries. (His book is mainly about lying attacks on secular child care personnel but he sees the link with similar attacks on the Catholic Church).  He published the Irish material separately on his website in an essay "States of Fear, the Redress Board and Ireland's Folly". Unfortunately Richard Webster died in 2011 aged only 60. His friends maintained the website RichardWebster.net until recently but it's no longer available (although his Blog is). Fortunately I copied the text onto my old website and I have linked to that. 

The data regarding Ireland in the book mainly concerns the allegations made by Pat Rabbitte, and the late Christine Buckely and Mary Raftery.

I also gave Richard the material concerning the Redress Board on which he based his essay "The Christmas Spirit in Ireland" dated 24 December 2005. Again I copied it onto my old website IrishSalem.com My contribution to that essay mainly consisted of the the statistics and the quote with which Richard ended it: 

With the standard of proof dangerously close to zero it is clearly, for the moment at least, almost impossible to be refused compensation. As the former bank robber James Gantley put it a year ago, the Redress Board is 'The Good Ship Lollipop, lots of dosh for everyone'.

The Secret of Bryn Estyn was published at the beginning of 2005 but was 9 years in the making.  In the book  Richard wrote that: 

Once again it must immediately be acknowledged that some of the allegations which have been made against Roman Catholic priests – possibly the majority of the early ones – are genuine. Others, including a number based on bizarre recovered memories, are quite evidently false.

But in the later essay he said: 

But it is also likely to be the case that a very large number of the claims received [by the Redress Board], perhaps as many as 90%, would prove, if it were possible to investigate them fully, entirely false. If that is indeed the case then the Irish government has committed a protracted act of folly on a scale unprecedented in the entire history of sexual abuse compensation schemes. [my emphasis]

 I hope that I contributed to his change of emphasis! 

(B) My Testimony to the Ryan Commission re False Allegations

I gave evidence to the Ryan Commission on my own behalf and as a member of the group "Let Our Voices Emerge" that represented victims of false allegations. I had a letter in the Irish Examiner on 7 November 2011 "Ryan Report Did Not Deal with False Allegations"

that summarizes our experience. 

My own testimony concerned false allegations of child murder - mainly targeting the Christian Brothers but also against the Sisters of Mercy. An updated version of my testimony is contained in my article "Blood Libel in Ireland - directed against Catholics not Jews"  The same kind of allegations have been made against the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam (and Good Shepherd nuns etc) - except they are supposed to have starved children to death rather than beaten them to death!

In that connection, I also contributed to Hermann Kelly's 2007 book "Kathy's Real Story: A Culture of False Allegations Exposed" which deals mainly with fake abuse "survivor" Kathy O'Beirne but also goes into the culture of hysteria that made her own book "Kathy's Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalen Laundries" into a best-seller in 2005. I contributed to the second part of Mr. Kelly's book and especially to the section he which he discusses claims that the Christian Brothers had been responsible for the deaths of boys in their care. Because many of these claims refer to periods when no boy died of ANY cause(!), I coined the phrase "Murder of the Undead". Since Hermann Kelly is more moderate than I, he uses the subheading "Funerals of the Undead"  in his discussion of this issue! 

(C) History Seminar on Tuam Children's Home etc

This History Seminar was held in Galway on in October 2020 and - apart from myself - it featured Eugene Jordan, recently the President of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society and Brian Nugent ,author of  @Tuam Babies: A Critical look at the Tuam Children's Home Scandal. A major topic was the claim that the Bon Secours and other nuns allowed children to starve to death. These allegations were based on a (deliberate?) misunderstanding of the medical term "Marasmus". (The Final Report of the Commission on Mothers and Baby Homes later confirmed that Marasmus on a Death Certificate did not mean death by wilful neglect.)

In my own lecture, I quoted from a crazy article by Emer O'Kelly in the Sunday Independent on 8 June 2014 "Tuam Babies Cry Not For Justice But For Vengeance" that opens with the following:

Seventy years ago, on the orders of a maniac, little children and babies were herded into barren camps in Germany and occupied Poland by men in black uniforms. They were starved to death in those camps; sometimes they had hideous medical experiments carried out upon them while alive, so hideous the silence of death was probably merciful. And when they died, their little bodies were thrown into huge pits. Because they were scum: Jewish scum.

In the course of the article Emer O'Kelly trice denounces the Good Shepherd Sisters  i.e. the wrong nuns!

Similar thuggish articles appeared in other newspapers (including the Sunday World) and obviously affected former residents. In my "Open Letter to Archbishop Michael Neary regarding Tuam Home" I quoted one of them (regarding the Good Shepherd Home in New Ross in 1964) : 

I saw a baby in a nun’s arms and blood dripping along the floor. I saw another nun standing with a shovel in her hand. I was a 12 year old. I knew they were going out to do something, or dig a hole for that child but nobody would listen to me.

This was published in the Sunday World on 29 June 2014. Earlier that same month Fr Brian D’Arcy had an  article  entitled “Fr Brian: Baby Graves are Our Greatest Crime” that includes the following:

“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….

Please note that part C of my article "Deaths of Children in Mother and Baby Care Homes" is entitled "Commission Acknowledges Existence of False Allegations!" and includes the Commission's conclusion that "A number of witnesses gave evidence that was clearly incorrect. This contamination probably occurred because of meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage" [my emphasis]

(D) SUMMARY

I had intended to write more but today 31 March 2021 is the deadline for submissions. I may send additional material as an Appendix later tonight. To summarise my concerns I will repeat the above quotation from Richard Webster's 2005 essay "The Christmas Spirit in Ireland":

But it is also likely to be the case that a very large number of the claims received [by the Redress Board], perhaps as many as 90%, would prove, if it were possible to investigate them fully, entirely false. If that is indeed the case then the Irish government has committed a protracted act of folly on a scale unprecedented in the entire history of sexual abuse compensation schemes.

I am concerned to ensure that Minister for Children, Equality and Youth, Roderic O'Gorman does not repeat this "protracted act of folly" !

[ I note that "submissions received will be subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2014 and may also be published as part of a final report on the Restorative Recognition Scheme." I am publishing my submission on my Blog IrishSalem.blogspot.com . You may find it easier to access the links via the Blog rather than the email! ]

Best wishes

Rory Connor

11 Lohunda Grove

Clonsilla

Dublin 15

Submissions

10:32 PM 

to me

Dear Rory

I wish to acknowledge receipt of your written submission which we will take into consideration when compiling our report.

With my thanks and kind regards

Mary Lou

Dear Mary Lou

Thanks a lot. Before clock strikes midnight I'm sending you links to two articles I wrote regarding Richard Webster after his death (Appendix 1) and a link to his Blog that is still online (Appendix 2). Both have material on Redress Boards in Nova Scotia and Jersey as well as Ireland

Appendix 1 "In Memory of Richard Webster" - article/obituary on my old website after he died on 23 June 2011 and "Richard Webster, The Idea of Evil and Operation Midland" my Blog article comprising some of our correspondence regarding the Jersey lunacy.

Appendix 2. HIS 2008 blog article "Something evil had happened . . . I had to go on' - Jersey in the Sunday papers"

Rory

EPILOGUE:

(i) Associated Press Apology to Bon Secours Sisters

I had intended to add more to my submission but, as usual for me, ran up against a deadline. The main thing omitted is reference to my article "Tuam Babies and Associated Press Apology to Bon Secours Sisters" 

The Jesuit magazine "America" got the AP to apologise for its worldwide publication of stories that the Catholic Church had refused to baptise the Tuam babies and that it was Church policy to refuse Baptism to the children of unmarried mothers. The AP apology indicated that they had repeated "incorrect Irish news reports"

THIS lie isn't on the same level as the ones about Nazi nuns starving babies to death but it's important because it can be PROVEN false- even half a century or more later. I'm not sure how it started BUT I recall reading reports about "Survivors" claiming that nuns had insulted them and referred to their babies as "Spawn of Satan". I assume that some "Survivors" then progressed from telling stories whose credibility can't be established decades late, to telling lies that can. And Irish media published their lies!  

It's interesting that it was a publication in the USA that got the AP to apologise. I'm sure there are many Americans - ignorant of or prejudiced against the Catholic Church - who would have seen nothing remarkable about this tale. (Just another routine example of Catholic Evil). However is there a single Irish editor - or journalist - who actually believed it? Probably not but there are no Irish MSM editors who are interested in nailing the lie or securing an apology! 

(ii)  "A Redress Board for Jersey"

[Extract from R Webster's article dated 9 June 2008 - no longer online but I quote from it in my article "In Memory of Richard Webster" - see Appendix 1 above]

There have also been a number of other developments. More than a week ago the Jersey Evening Post reported that calls had been made by victims' advocates for Jersey to set up a 'Redress Board'. In practice this would mean that compensation could be awarded to alleged victims without the the need for allegations to be tested in a criminal court. In support of this move Fay Maxted, chief executive of the Survivors' Trust, actually cited the examples provided by compensation schemes set up both in the Republic of Ireland and in Nova Scotia:

"The redress boards set up in Nova Scotia and Ontario in the 1990s, and in Ireland in 2002, have been able to allow victims the opportunity to be heard and recompensed in some way and given communities the opportunity to challenge the silence and secrecy that concealed the abuse in the past."

Today almost exactly the same story appears in the Guardian. What neither the Jersey Evening Post nor the Guardian pointed out was that there is a significant amount of evidence that both in Ireland and Nova Scotia these schemes have in practice functioned almost as a compensation-on-demand scheme for anyone who has made allegations of abuse, whether or not there is any evidence to support these allegations. 

In both cases there have been well-informed claims that the creation of such redress schemes has led to, or intensified, a veritable culture of false allegations. This is the argument put forward by Herman Kelly in the closing sections of his book Kathy's Real Story: A Culture of False Allegations Exposed. The same argument was also implicit in the conclusions of the Canadian judge Fred Kaufman when he was commissioned by the Nova Scotia government to conduct an inquiry into the compensation scheme there.

For my own comment on the workings of the Irish redress board, click here.

If the Jersey parliament were to act on the ill-judged recommendations reported today by the Guardian, they would be committing an act of the grossest kind of folly. [My emphasis RC]

(iii) Ireland, Jersey and Myself as Footnote in History!

[ Extract from R Webster's article of 19 April 2008  Flat Earth News and The Jersey Child Abuse Scandal - Part 1 

The idea that residents of children homes were being murdered played little or no part in the Kincora, North Wales and Casa Pia scandals. But such ideas were prominent in the moral panic which overtook the Irish Republic in 1999 after the broadcast on Irish TV of States of Fear, a three-part documentary series about the Irish industrial schools. Amidst the widespread allegations of abuse which were made in the wake of this programme, many children were said to have disappeared or been murdered in schools run by the Christian Brothers. As the tireless campaigner Rory Connor has pointed out, in a comment posted on the Community Care website, ‘these included accusations in a major Sunday newspaper of mass killing (“a Holocaust”) at Letterfrack in Co. Galway.’ However, as Connor notes, ‘Not a single claim has proved to be correct. This is not surprising as several relate to periods when no child died of any cause.’

In Ireland, as in North Wales and Kincora, there can be no doubt that some children were physically or sexually abused in children’s homes. But in all these cases what has happened is that a small nucleus of reality has had woven around it a vast tissue of fantasy and fabrication. Both in Ireland and in North Wales, as in similar scandals in Cheshire, Merseyside, Northumbria (and indeed in Nova Scotia), the evidence indicates that overwhelming majority of allegations associated with such scandals are false. [My emphasis]

 

The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns [2]

Tuam Babies Not Buried in Septic Tank

This is the second in a projected series of three articles on "The Tuam Babies and the Bon Secours Nuns". Part [1] is HERE  

The final report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy) is now due to be delivered to the Government on 30 October 2020. The Commission was set up in the wake of media claims that the bodies of up to 800 babies and children were buried in a septic tank in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, located in Tuam, County Galway.

TUAM BABIES

[The following is an article by Fr Padraig McCarthy on the website of the Association of Catholic Priests dated June 2014 - plus extracts from Comments ]

Reporting on the Tuam story has often been wild and sensational, and out of touch with known facts.

Brendan O’Neill, whose website describes himself as a Marxist Proletarian Firebrand has a blog on the story of the misreporting at "The Tuam Tank: Another Myth About Evil Ireland" [Subtitle: The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged. ]

The Tablet this week [June 2014] reports: “Fr Fintan Monaghan, spokesman and archivist for the diocese of Tuam said the diocese’s baptismal register showed that 2,005 children from St Mary’s mother and baby home had been baptised from 1937 to 1961.” 

Proportionately that would mean perhaps around 3000 children were baptised from the Tuam home 1924 – 1961. This, with the 796 recorded deaths, would indicate a mortality rate of about 20% overall. This would need to be related to the national infant mortality rates in those years, and to statistics in other countries.

It seems that mortality rates for what we used to call “illegitimate” children are generally higher in most if not all countries than for children whose parents are married, even today. The reasons for this are unclear. Possible causes may be that the mother did not approach a doctor as early; and the health of the mother may have been be below the average due to poverty in the case of mother and baby homes (better off families could make other arrangements). It would be relevant to know how the funding of the mother and baby homes compared to the funding of maternity hospitals at the time.

Stillbirths in Ireland were not registered until 1995, so a stillborn infant would have neither birth nor death certificate.

The burial of very young infants in the first half of the 20th century in Ireland was not as we do today. They were very often buried in mass graves, like the Holy Angels plot in Glasnevin where over 50,000 infants are buried, and there were no memorials with names. Only in the last 20 years or so has this plot been made more presentable. Poverty was also an important factor in providing a memorial stone on graves. A not uncommon custom was to put the body of a very young infant into the coffin with another burial taking place at the time, with no necessary family connection.

Adoption legislation in Ireland took effect in 1952. We hear stories of adoption of the child of a single mother, where the mother was under such pressure that there was not free consent. This was the case in many other countries as well. Until about the 1980s, adoption was “closed” – no information available which could facilitate later contact between the birth mother and the child. The USA had what is sometimes called the “Baby Scoop Era” (do an internet search).

The question of how to deal with illegitimate births was not just an Irish problem. Social engineering in the form of eugenics was in the fashion in a number of countries. Many European countries, and many states in the USA, had far more draconian measures: compulsory sterilisation of those considered unfit to be parents. In 1927 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr., Associate Justice of US Supreme Court, approved for the sterilisation of a young woman who had been raped: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Just recently, in May 2014, the California Senate passed Bill 1135 to prevent sterilisation of women prisoners in a coercive prison environment.

There are so many factors to be considered before we can come to a more complete understanding of the matter. Those who dealt with these matters in the past in Ireland faced situations which may be very difficult for us to envisage. The fact that we today may judge that some actions taken were not good does not mean that all those who made those decisions were bad people. We must also keep in mind our present-day situation, where the infant mortality rate for Traveller children is 3.5 times that of the general population, and where our provision for those seeking asylum in Ireland leaves so many in deplorable conditions.

Padraig McCarthy

Fr. Pádraig is a retired priest who has served 42 years in his pastoral work and currently does support work in Balally Parish, Sandyford, South Dublin . He is the author of "Unheard Story: Dublin Archdiocese and the Murphy Report"  that challenges some of the assumptions and assessments of that Report

RESPONSES

Rory Connor June 15th, 2014 at 12:03 pm
Very calm measured response from Padraig McCarthy to another blood libel of a type with which we have become all too familiar in Ireland. He refers to (Marxist firebrand) Brendan O’Neill’s editorial in the Spiked-online website that exposes the lunacy of our latest witch-hunt. A few quotes from O’Neill’s article should be taken to heart before our journalists manage to consign their latest idiocy to the memory hole:

‘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 subtitle to O’Neill’s article is “The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged”. Anybody who thinks he is exaggerating should read the article he refers to here

 “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’.”Tuam Babies Cry Not for Justice but for Vengeance" by Emer O'Kelly

Now that this has been transformed into a general investigation of all Mother and Baby homes, the people responsible for the atrocity stories about the Bon Secour nuns in Tuam should not be allowed to fade into the background. They should be questioned about their allegations!

Paddy Ferry June 15th, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Padraig, I do admire your taking on this horrible story and with your usual attention to detail and the relevant statistics. The silence on our ACP site was truly deafening all week. While I accept that we do not know, as yet, the full story, this could yet be the greatest scandal of them all. Just when you think — hope –that the worst must surely be past us now and things cannot possibly get any worse, they actually could get much, much worse. Even if the story remains confined to Tuam and does not eventually include Cork, Tipperary and God knows where else.

I cannot accept any attempt at justification or rationalization that is based on the premise that this kind of thing happened in other counties too — in fact probably was much worse in other countries. Nor does the argument that society as a whole must accept the blame. To a large extent our society was unthinking and uneducated until Donagh O’Malley’s famous stroke of his ministerial pen. Our morals and attitudes were completely moulded by the institutional church and the blame must rest squarely with that institution.

One thing that baffles and bothers me; how come those who were among the “educated” in our country , clergy and religious, seem to have been untouched — to a large extent — by the wonderful good news of the Gospel message of Christ?

I read all the articles in last Sunday’s Sunday Independent on the this awful topic. I had to ask myself; how can we, as a church, ever hope to regain respect among the masses?

Sean O'Conaill June 15th, 2014 at 1:57 pm
This concluding paragraph from Brendan O’Neill’s article in Spiked is worth quoting:

“Was the Ireland of yesteryear a sometimes harsh and unpleasant place? Yes. Did the Catholic Church mistreat some of the women and children in its care? Undoubtedly. But the unhealthy obsession over the past 10 years with raking over Ireland’s past has little to do with confirming such facts and instead has become a kind of grotesque moral sport, providing kicks to the anti-Catholic brigade and fuel to the historical self-flagellation that now passes for public life in Ireland. There’s a terrible irony here: in desperately searching for demons that they can hate, in obsessing over evil and its capacity to destroy lives, in frequently substituting speculation for evidence, these history-combing Catholic-bashers employ the very same irrational tactics of demonology and mythmaking once beloved of Ireland’s old Catholic establishment.”

History often seems to be process in which one set of brokers of honour and shame is replaced by another. The Irish ‘Catholic establishment’ of the 20th century (never exclusively clerical) has been displaced by a generally secularist and anti-Catholic establishment of the 21st, while the shamed pregnant single woman of the mother-and-baby homes is now replaced by the shamed cleric so often pilloried by the media establishment..........

Rory Connor June 17th, 2014 at 7:21 pm
Paddy, 
You read all the articles in the Sunday Independent (8 June) about this topic and you wonder how the Catholic Church can regain people’s respect. Does this mean you fully accept the truth of the article which Brendan O’Neill summarised as follows:
“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’.”

I take it you noticed that the Independent journalist specifically REJECTED the term “mass grave”, itself bad enough, and preferred to describe it as a “septic tank” and later as a “cess pit”? Did you also notice that in a separate article in the same newspaper the journalist wrote about the “800 bodies of children SAID to be found BY a septic tank run from 1925 to 1961 by the Good Shepherd Sisters”. [My emphasis and note that she also gets the name of the congregation wrong.]
The Tuam Babies case: An Inhumanity Born of Despair

The second article was presumably written shortly after the first to reflect the fact that the atrocity story was falling apart with great speed. In the Irish Times on the previous day, local historian Catherine Corless said she never used the word “dumped” and never told anyone that 800 bodies were dumped in a septic tank. According to an article in the Sunday Times (Irish edition) by Justine McCarthy on 8 June “The location of the grave in Tuam has been widely reported as the site of a septic tank, but contemporaneous maps show it to have been a water tank”. In fact the whole issue of a “tank” – water or sewage – would appear to be irrelevant. It is clear from the Irish Times report that in 1975 two local boys lifted up a concrete slab and found bones underneath. “In his kitchen, Sweeney demonstrates the the size of the concrete flag as he recalls it; it’s an area little bigger than his coffee table, about 120cm long and 60cm wide.” And later in the article: Would [the tank] have taken up the entire space of what is now known as the unofficial graveyard for the babies who died at the home? “No” [Catherine Corless] says. “Maybe a third of the area.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-the-trouble-with-the-septic-tank-story-1.1823393

The claim that Bon Secour nuns dumped the bodies of children in a septic tank is what caused this story to go viral world-wide and caused the Government to order an inquiry. What MAY have happened is that bodies were buried in the general area of what once was a water tank. But these bodies may well have been Famine victims from the previous century – which is what the Gardai appear to believe! (More on this later). It is grotesque for people to use this non-scandal as a means of expressing their hatred of the Catholic Church. It is also an insult to the dead – whether Famine victims OR children from the home.

Rory Connor June 17th, 2014 at 9:40 pm
I wrote above: “What MAY have happened is that bodies were buried in the general area of what once was a water tank.” I just came across the following from a Daily Mail article on 2 June
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2645870/Mass-grave-contains-bodies-800-babies-site-Irish-home-unmarried-mothers.html
“The babies were usually buried in a plain shroud without a coffin in a plot that had housed a WATER TANK attached to the workhouse that preceded the mother and child home. [My Emphasis]

This ties in with the Sunday Times article on 8 June but the TITLE of the Daily Mail article is still “Mass Septic Tank Grave ‘containing the Skeletons of 800 Babies’ at site of Irish Home for Unmarried Mothers“. Our journalists appear to be amending their atrocity stories on the hoof!

Of course I appreciate that local historian Catherine Corless is upset by the way she was misquoted by a hysterical mass media. However the article in the Irish Times on Saturday 7 June also had this curious paragraph:

When Corless was researching the home she looked at old maps of Tuam. One was an 1840 Ordnance Survey map that shows the then workhouse. At the rear of the site is a space she believes to be the sewage tank for the workhouse, although it is not labelled as such. Later maps have “sewage tank” written in the same space. But there is confusion about what dates these maps relate to. One map Corless shows The Irish Times is dated 1892. It describes the building on the site as “Children’s Home”, but in 1892 the building was a workhouse. It did not become a home until 1925. Corless had not noticed this until her attention was drawn to it.

It is extra-ordinary that she did not notice this discrepancy. The 1892 map is presumably that shown in Philip Boucher-Hayes blog here
http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/04/tuam-babies-the-evidence/#comments
and HE doesn’t comment on the discrepancy either! He does quote a reply the Gardai sent him:

Hello Philip.The grounds in Tuam were being surveyed in 2012 and bones were found, they are historical burials going back to Famine times, there is no suggestion of any impropriety and there is no Garda investigation. Also there is no confirmation from any source that there are between 750 and 800 bodies present.

Boucher-Hayes goes on to state that The location of that site [of the Famine era bones] is about 100 yards away from the septic tank burial site. So the Gardaí are misinformed on this or have decided to find a reason not to investigate any closer.
[My Emphasis: Perhaps the Gardai are afraid of a belt of the crozier?]

In his latest post dated 12 June he does concede that at least one of the two plots possibly used by the Bon Secours nuns was not a septic tank as previously thought and also "But the most significant aspect to this information is this – whatever cruelties you could lay at the nuns feet, however harsh or medically incompetent the regime they ran was, it was always hard to believe that they would have knowingly put babies in a septic tank."
http://philipboucher-hayes.com/2014/06/

Well now THAT is a great relief. The trouble is that the Government inquiry is set to include all Mother and Baby homes, plus issues about Adoption, Vaccinations etc. So are the people who published atrocity stories about the nuns dumping babies in septic tanks, going to be questioned about their allegations? I suspect that the Investigation Report will ignore all the OBVIOUS lies and accept as true any claim that the Bon Secour nuns cannot PROVE are false. Since all the Sisters who worked in the Tuam Home are now safely deceased, my fear is that they will be demonised by the same kind of people who published the “babies in the septic tank” atrocity stories.

Paddy Ferry June 18th, 2014 at 12:22 am
Rory, I have to say fair play to you, you have mounted a strong and well-researched defence and I sincerely hope you are right and this is just a sensationalist false alarm. I say that even though I feel Fr. Gerard Maloney’s reaction (in the most recent article above)  to the “maybe” scandal is a better approach and one that I would empathise with more. However, you obviously feel strongly that the church is being unfairly treated. The article with the reference to “scum” may well have been the piece written by Gene Kerrigan. Now, I cannot check it because even in this high tech, digital age I receive my Sunday Independent on Tuesday and I pass it on to my Tipperary born mother in law on Friday. So, I don’t have it now. However, I have to say I greatly admire Gene Kerrigan. He is an excellent journalist as are many of his colleagues and he has been my first port of call when I get the paper and his analysis of, not just the church, but bankers and politicians as well, over the years has been excellent, in my opinion.

I have just had a quick look at Sunday’s paper which came to-day and the piece by Eilis O’Hanlon on victimhood seems very reasonable and mature. And, Rory, you know as well as I do that young women who had a child outside marriage were looked upon as scum at home in Ireland and were frequently denounced as such from the altar. And, with all due respect to you, Rory, I feel we would do better to be exercised more by the terrible attitudes and treatment– definitely unchristian — young, unmarried women and their children received in our native land not so very long ago

Joe O'Leary June 18th, 2014 at 4:20 am
The terrible treatment unmarried mothers received is quite a different thing from how mother-and-baby homes handled the great number of mothers and babies confided to their care by the state and by the families. In the case of the Tuam home it is quite possible that the Bon Secours nuns are guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever. The dangerous overcrowding of the home was probably not their choice. The death rate was lower than in most such homes (about 20%, as opposed to 90% in some US homes). The babies were given respectful burial in a vault grave (coffins were purchased from a local dealer). Contrary to the Daily Mail (aka the Daily Insult, says Salman Rushdie), the children were properly baptised. Why were the children not buried in the Holy Angels plot in the nearby cemetery? Could it be that that the locals did not want their children’s bones mixed with those of the unwanted?

As to the treatment of Irish unmarried mothers today, Fintan O’Toole has pointed to our huge abortion rates. As to non-Irish mothers and babies in Ireland, there are other 
questions to be asked.

Des Gilroy June 18th, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Thanks to Padraig McCarthy for his balanced piece on the story emerging from the Tuam mother and baby home over the past fortnight. Regrettably, too many commentators have gone overboard on this particular home and it is very hard for the public now to separate fact from exaggeration. A public enquiry has now been promised and the calls for its enlargement to take account of many other institutions makes one wonder whether this will ever get off the ground........

What is unhelpful at this moment is the media hysteria with the various commentators coming to their conclusions before the facts are known. We do know that shock horror stories sell newspapers and whip up tv and radio ratings but some of the comments made by people who should be more responsible have been very surprising. It was most disappointing, therefore, to hear one of our national treasures, Brian D’Arcy, referring to Tuam as “an atrocity” , “a serious crime” and finally referring to it “as shockable as something that happened in Germany in the war.” This latter comment has now been misrepresented in this weeks “Northside News” as Brian “ drawing parallels with Nazi Germany”. I am sure Brian never intended to equate the Bon Secours with the Nazis but it just shows how careful high profile leaders should be with their language.

Eddie Finnegan June 19th, 2014 at 8:30 am
As always, thanks to Pádraig McCarthy for attempting to place all this in the context of “not just an Irish problem” (his penultimate paragraph above). Thanks, too, to Des Gilroy@12 for his rational pursuit of “the facts”.

Vincent Twomey SVD has an Opinion piece in this morning’s Irish Times which, I’m sure, deserves reproduction on this site: “Catholic Church should set up its own commission of investigation following mother and child home controversy.”

His additional suggestion: “Government commission should be chaired by someone of evident distinction who is not Irish or of Irish extraction.”

[I realise that an appearance by Vincent Twomey on the ACP website may be something of a culture shock for both parties  ]

Association of Catholic Priests June 19th, 2014 at 8:40 am
Link to Irish Times article by Vincent Twomey SVD
Catholic Church should set up its own commission of investigation following mother and child home controversy

Joe O'Leary June 19th, 2014 at 10:33 am
Thanks to Vincent Twomey for insisting on historical perspective. Another good article is: http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/galway-horror-part-ii

Des Gilroy June 19th, 2014 at 6:06 pm
As is his wont, Sean O’Conaill has penned a very thoughtful and cogently argued piece on the ACI website which is very relevant to this discussion on the Tuam Babies case. I would commend it to all.
The link is http://www.acireland.ie/honour-and-shame-and-irelands-culture-war-sean-oconaill/

Rory Connor June 21st, 2014 at 10:18 pm
There are interesting articles in (the Jesuit) America Magazine and in Forbes Magazine by Kevin Clarke and Eamonn Fingleton respectively regarding this fake scandal. I see that these critical commentators have succeeded in extracting apologies (or “clarifications”) for some of the most disgusting allegations – or at any rate for such allegations that can be readily disproved. This is Kevin Clarke in his Second and Third third articles on the subject:
The Galway Horror Part II [Kevin Clarke, 18 June 2014]

“Babies born inside the institutions were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial.”
It is a sentence, unattributed to any source, which repeats—either word for word or in a close approximation—in HUNDREDS [My emphasis RC] of articles concerning the now infamous deaths and burials of hundreds of children in Tuam, Galway between 1925 and 1961. This appalling sacramental indifference is referenced in major U.S. and U.K. publications and cited in leading online opinion journals like Salon as more evidence of the cruelty of the Bon Secours sisters who ran the home and the Catholic Church in Ireland in general.

Associated Press Issues Correction Based on America Query [Kevin Clarke, 20 June 2014]
After our June 18 report on baptismal certificates recorded in Tuam, I queried the Associated Press regarding their stories on the Tuam Mothers and Babies Home.
Today AP issued the following correction:

Ireland-Children’s Mass Graves storyDUBLIN (AP) — In stories published June 3 and June 8 about young children buried in unmarked graves after dying at a former Irish orphanage for the children of unwed mothers, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that the children had not received Roman Catholic baptisms; documents show that many children at the orphanage were baptized. The AP also incorrectly reported that Catholic teaching at the time was to deny baptism and Christian burial to the children of unwed mothers; although that may have occurred in practice at times it was not church teaching. In addition, in the June 3 story, the AP quoted a researcher who said she believed that most of the remains of children who died there were interred in a disused septic tank; the researcher has since clarified that without excavation and forensic analysis it is impossible to know how many sets of remains the tank contains, if any. The June 3 story also contained an incorrect reference to the year that the orphanage opened; it was 1925, not 1926.

It is interesting that Forbes the famous business magazine, which has NO connection with the Church, has published two highly skeptical articles about this witch-hunt. The second one by Eamonn Fingleton is here:
796 Babies In A Septic Tank": Does An Anti-Catholic Bias Help Explain This Hoax?

I recall that several years ago, Forbes published a long and highly sarcastic article about people making child abuse compensation claims based on decades old “memories” which they had suddenly “recovered”. In that case, I believe that Forbes were worried about the implications for the American Insurance industry but that issue hardly arises here! 

However it may be worth recalling that journalists on the Wall Street Journal were instrumental in discrediting the Satanic Ritual Abuse craze in the 1990s. Evidently, BUSINESS journalists are less likely to believe in witches and witch-hunts!

Pádraig McCarthy June 23rd, 2014 at 9:36 am
An interesting snippet from the Enda Kenny interview with Gay Byrne (22 June), “The Meaning of Life”. The Taoiseach’s mother gave birth to triplets who died: two died before she returned home, and one a few days later. These were buried (in two different locations), and it appears that they were laid to rest in unmarked graves. This was just how this was normally dealt with at the time. It was not a matter of poverty or neglect. The father of the children was a prominent GAA player, and the mother had worked for Fianna Fáil and RTÉ.

Memorials were erected just a few years before the death of the Taoiseach’s mother in 2011.

Rory Connor June 28th, 2014 at 12:14 am
As this particular discussion seems to be coming to an end, maybe it’s time to put it into perspective. The following is based on comments I made to an article in The New Republic by Jason Walsh:
That Story About Irish Babies Buried in a Septic Tank Was Shocking. It Also Wasn't Entirely True.
(Incidentally it’s remarkable how SOME secular and Marxist style publications have denounced the atrocity stories while our senior clerics grovel before the accusers)

This fake atrocity story is the latest in a series of grotesque claims that began in 1997 with a claim that a Sister of Mercy had murdered a baby girl by burning holes in the baby’s legs with a red hot poker. However at least that baby existed and actually died. This claim was followed by a long series of similar blood libels against the Christian Brothers – some of which related to periods when no boy died of ANY cause. Accordingly I coined the phrases “Murder of the Undead” and “Victimless Murders” – try Googling these. …….. the Blood Libels were published/broadcast by our “intellectual” Irish Times, our best-selling Irish Independent, the state broadcasting company RTE and the independent broadcaster TV3.

…… for those who want to sample Ireland’s history of hysterical allegations against Catholic religious see “Letter to Sunday Tribune re Child-Killing Allegations” where I attempted to give a summary of the child-killing claims up to 2006.(There have been more since then).

At the time I actually forgot the one about the murderous nun with the hot poker but you can find the story here: Hot Poker Was Used on Little Marion
Note the title of the UK Mirror article "HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM."

How did I manage to forget this when I was doing my summary article in 2006? Because the torrent of lunatic claims is so huge that it overwhelms you. The “babies bodies in a septic tank” is just the latest in a long and demented series!

Paddy Ferry June 29th, 2014 at 5:50 pm
Rory,
This is definitely my last word on this topic — I am not even sure what is the main issue we are discussing now. It may be — sensationalist and inaccurate reporting aimed at damaging the Catholic Church in Ireland. That would not be my take on this, Rory. It would be hard to make some of these stories more sensational than they already are. However, my main reason for responding to you is because I am puzzled as to why you gave us the link to the piece in the Mirror concerning the treatment of Christine Buckley and the child, Marion Howe in Goldenbridge. You are surely not calling into question the harrowing accounts that Christine gave of the treatment she and others were subjected to. I did not see the original interview when Christine Buckley appeared on the “Late Late” nor did I see the subsequent documentary. However, when she passed away earlier this year, I read quite a bit about Christine who was obviously an incredible woman who had the courage to speak out not just for herself but for all the others who experienced similar brutality in Goldenbridge.

However, when I read or hear the word “Goldenbridge”I do not think immediately of Christine but of the little child, Marion, who, sadly, did not live to tell her story.

Rory, I would not trust British tabloidism either but I would trust –yes indeed — the Sunday Independent, and it was in the Sunday Inde that I first read about Marion Howe. It is some years since I first read the story and my memory of some of the details may be a bit hazy. At the time it made a major impact on me. As I remember it, Marion’s Dad had gone to England to look for work and a short time later her Mum became ill. There were four children at that stage and they were all taken into care,– Marion to Goldenbridge. 

Sometime later she died. Her father came home and saw Marion in the mortuary and saw evidence of injury/wounding to the child’s leg. He subsequently made a request to see the death certificate which had mysteriously disappeared. He then went to the Gaurds and the Guard he spoke to told him he would be as well forgetting all about it. As far as I can remember, the family took no further action at that time.If anyone feels that any of this is not accurate then I stand to be corrected.

Rory, I have to say to you that defending the indefensible does not do our Church any favours nor does it bring any credit on ourselves. I am as concerned as anybody about the damage that has been inflicted — self-inflicted – on our Church and I am equally concerned about our prospects of regaining some respect and credibility. However, I would respectfully suggest that we would be better employed focusing on the ill-treatment and brutality inflicted on the weakest and poorest in our country by those who should have been influenced more by the Gospel of justice and love rather than continually fussing about the reporting of the atrocities, sensationalist or otherwise.

Rory Connor June 30th, 2014 at 12:06 am
Paddy,
One major reason I mentioned the 1997 “Hot Poker Was Used On Little Marion” atrocity story is that it bears some resemblance to the stories being published and broadcast about the Bon Secour nuns in Tuam e.g. claims that they allowed children to starve to death, buried the bodies in a septic tank and that the Church refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers. For example today’s Sunday World has a story subtitled “Councillor Seeking Justice For ‘Murder’ of Babies” about People Before Profit councillor Deirdre Wadding. The following is an extract:

Deirdre said that what was happening to single mothers in Ireland even in the 1980s was a form of “torture”. “In later years, there was brutality, what you would call torture,” she said, describing the babies bodies found in the septic tank in Tuam as “nothing short of murder”. “Children seem to have been allowed to die. No doubt the cracks will uncover as time goes on and we can be sure if it happened in Tuam it happened elsewhere. We have to seek justice. Somebody has to be responsible for this. ……If that means individuals being brought to court, jail sentences, whatever it means, we cannot hold back”.

Another woman describes a “sinister scene” in the Good Shepherd convent in New Ross in 1964.
I saw a baby in a nun’s arms and blood dripping along the floor. I saw another nun standing with a shovel in her hand. I was a 12 year old. I knew they were going out to do something, or dig a hole for that child but nobody would listen to me.”

This is very much in line with the “Hot Poker was Used on Little Marion Story”. I don’t know the Sunday Independent article you refer to, but the allegation was dealt with in an article in the Sunday Times (Irish Edition) on 28 April 1996 – article entitled
“Medical View ‘Inconsistent’ with Goldenbridge Abuse”

……. One of the more chilling allegations to surface was that an 11-month-old baby died four days after she was put into Goldenbridge. When the infant’s father, Myles Howe. returned from England and went to St Ultan’s hospital, he was told by a nurse that his baby had burns on her knees but the staff had got her too late to save her. The postmortem said the child died of dysentery.The Howes have never been satisfied by the official response.

[Doctor] Prendiville [1] recalls that St Ultan’s was established largely for dealing with bowel complaints such as dysentery or gastroenteritis, a common illness among children which at that time could reach epidemic proportions in Dublin. He speculated that Marian Howe was more than likely admitted to St Ultan’s with a bowel complaint. “I wouldn’t say that burns of that size on a child’s legs would have been the cause of death. They didn’t treat burns in St Ultan’s. If the baby died from a burn, there would have to be an inquest. But failure to communicate information is a defect in many hospitals,” he said.

But if the burns were not the cause of Marian’s death, asks Howe, why was he told by Xavieria that it was an “accident” and not dysentery that killed his child? Why, on his arrival at St Ultan’s to see his dead child, did a nurse indicate to him that his daughter had died of burns? And why could nobody explain to him the large burn marks on the sides of her knees?

The outrage that followed the Prime Time programme was directed as much at Xavieria’s denials of abuse as at an apparently “soft” line of questioning. The allegation that a baby in her charge died of burns was not put to her on the programme. The reason was that after researching the allegation, the Prime Time team could find no evidence to support it. according to an RTE source. The reporter did ask Xavieria about the incident, he said, but her response was edited out of the programme. [Emphasis is mine RC]

[1] Doctor J. B. Prendiville was a senior surgeon who worked at the hospital where children from Goldenbridge were treated during the 1950s.

It wasn’t only Prime Time that failed to find any evidence to support the allegation – neither did the Gardai. This is despite the fact that the original “Dear Daughter” documentary contained allegations that could easily be checked even decades later.

Christine Buckley [on my website IrishSalem.com ]
In the words of Irish Times journalist Eddie Holt (writing on 24 February 1996) “Christine Buckley was once beaten so badly by the unidentified Sister Sadist of the Shining Stick that she had to get about 100 stitches in her leg. On another occasion, perhaps too tired from walking up a flight of stairs, Stick just poured a kettle of boiling water over 10 year old Christine’s right thigh”.

Perhaps the Gardai did not investigate because they were afraid of a belt of the crozier? The child-killing and related allegations were also omitted from the Ryan Report published in 2009. Was Judge Ryan also afraid of the Bishops?

It is very important that the forthcoming investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes DOES produce a Report that deals with the allegations that have been made, especially the ones that can actually be proved/disproved even decades later e.g. child-killing and burials in a septic tank.

Joe O'Leary June 30th, 2014 at 6:33 am
Paddy Ferry, in the Tuam Babies scandal what “atrocities” were committed? The state authorities seem to have been well aware of mortality rates in these homes (more than matched in other countries) and vault burial of children must also have been known.

Joe O'Leary June 30th, 2014 at 7:07 am
In the case of the baby Marion Howe it is not clear that an “atrocity” occurred either:
“In a statement read to the court yesterday, the Sisters of Mercy said: “We, the Sisters of Mercy, accept that Marion had a burn to her leg at the time of her death and died of acute dysentery infection. We have been unable to establish how this burn occurred.”

“The statement continued: “We, the Sisters of Mercy, wish to express our deep sorrow to Myles and Christina Howe for the anguish and distress they experienced on and since the death of their baby daughter, Marion, while in our care in May 1955.”

“”We also wish to express our sorrow and regret if there was any lack of courtesy and compassion at that time,” it added.”

Afterword 25 August 2020

The Statement by the Sisters of Mercy referred to above by Fr Joe O'Leary was made in October 1997 - as per Irish Times article "Goldenbridge Nuns to Pay £20,000" I understand that the Sisters subsequently discovered a record showing that when baby Marion Howe was in her crib, a child thought that she looked cold and put in a hot water bottle that was too hot and caused a small burn. This would tie in with the statement by Dr Prendiville that I quoted in my last Comment above

"I wouldn’t say that burns of that size on a child’s legs would have been the cause of death. They didn’t treat burns in St Ultan’s."

As per the Irish Times article:

 Marion was visited by the orphanage doctor, Dr Dillon, who examined her and referred her to St Ultan's Hospital, the statement said. The child died on May 21st, 1955, and a post-mortem was held two days later. The coroner for the city of Dublin certified that Marion had died of acute dysentery infection.