Accepting some virus deaths is price of allowing people to live a 'whole life', says chief medical officer
by Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 1 April 2021 • 4:43pm
Lockdowns are unlikely to be needed again as Britain learns to treat coronavirus like flu, Prof Chris Whitty has said.
The chief medical officer said that up to 25,000 people die in a bad flu year without anyone noticing and that accepting some Covid deaths would be the price of keeping schools and business open and allowing people to live a "whole life".
Prof Whitty, speaking on a Royal School of Medicine webinar, said the Government would only be forced to "pull the alarm cord" if a dangerous variant arrived, against which people had no immunity and which sparked exponential growth.
"Covid is not going to go away," he said. "You've got to work out what's a rational policy to this and here I would differentiate quite a lot between a pandemic environment and what you get with seasonal flu.
"Every year, somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 citizens die of flu, most of them very elderly, and every few years you get a bad flu year where 20,000 to 25,000 die of it. The last time we had that was three years ago and no one noticed it.
"So it is clear we are going to have to manage it, at some point, rather like we manage the flu. Here is a seasonal, very dangerous disease that kills thousands of people and society has chosen a particular way round it."
Prof Whitty said it was important to bring Covid deaths as low as possible, but warned that society would not tolerate being locked down to prevent similar numbers of deaths to those from flu.
"We want to get as close as we can [to zero] but the question is how do you balance that against other priorities?" he said. "What are people prepared to put up with? What we've demonstrated in the last year is we don't have to have flu at all if we don't want to, because the things we’ve done against Covid have led to virtually no influenza.
"If next year we say 'we can deal with flu, everyone lock down over the winter' I think the medical profession would not make itself popular with the general public.
"We need to work out some balance which actually keeps it at a low level, minimises deaths as best we can, but in a way that the population tolerates, through medical countermeasures like vaccines and in due course drugs, which mean you can minimise mortality while not maximising the economic and social impacts on our fellow citizens."
Prof Whitty said although there would always be more measures that could be put in place to save lives, such as shutting schools and universities or preventing relatives visiting the elderly in care homes, such restrictions prevented people from living a "whole life".
Asked by Sir Simon Wessely, professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, whether lockdowns would be reimposed if cases rose, even in local areas, Prof Whitty said: "No, I don't think so."
However, he added: "Society will not tolerate more than a certain number of people being ill, even if they know it's going to go away come the spring, and the area where we're going to have to pull the alarm cord is if a variant of concern comes in that we can see is now back to a situation of unconstrained growth because the immunological response to it is just not there."
Boris Johnson has previously vowed that the current unlocking of restrictions is irreversible, and next week the Government will determine whether shops can reopen on April 12 as planned.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that infections in the community are continuing to fall, dropping eight per cent in a week.
However, Mr Johnson warned last week that cases were rising in Europe and a third wave may spread to Britain from the continent. Latest data from the King's College ZOE symptom tracker app also suggests the 'R' number may now be at one, or even above in some areas. The ONS warned that cases may be rising in the East of England.
Prof Whitty said that it was impossible to prevent variants from coming into the UK, and argued that shutting the borders would be unlikely to prevent new infections.
The Government has been strongly criticised for keeping the borders open during both lockdowns, even though studies have shown that the vast majority of Britain’s cases were imported from countries like Spain and Italy.
"We have to accept the idea that stopping variants coming to the UK is not a realistic starting point, but you can slow it down," he said. "Anyone who believes you can put up some border policy that stops it is misunderstanding the problem completely.
"While the 'R' is less than one, which it has been for two or three months, then new variants don't have much of a foothold. Once we start to open things up, then if a variant comes in it has the opportunity to spread and the more cases you import the quicker the starting point. What we’re trying to do is slow it down.”
Prof Whitty also said that it was sensible to keep an "open mind" on whether the AstraZeneca vaccine caused blood clots until it was proven otherwise.
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.)
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
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!
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]
Brown University in Rhode Island first hit headlines over alleged assaults in the early 1990s
The Times by Will Pavia, New York
March 23 2021,
[I made use of my two free Times articles a week, to view THIS article and to make a contribution to the Comments section. RC ]
A lavatory at Brown University once made headlines across America after women at the college began writing the names of men who had allegedly sexually assaulted them in a list on the wall.
The “rape list”, as it was called, appeared amid complaints from female students that administrators treated allegations as misunderstandings or indiscretions by “boys” who “do not know the rules yet”. It also prompted complaints from men who claimed that they had been anonymously slandered.
Three decades later Rhode Island’s oldest Ivy League university has set up an online reporting system in which students can make allegations of sexual assault or harassment anonymously to college officials. Some student groups say that it will encourage victims who might be reluctant to speak about their experience in person or over the phone.
“Anonymous denouncements,” Professor Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician at Yale University, tweeted. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Professor Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College in Minnesota who writes about higher education, said: “It’s a way for some people to come forward with stories about what’s happened, but if they are going to name the person but not be willing to put their name forward then it could become a way of targeting people they don’t like.”
Brown said the system was “one additional mechanism through which community members can report incidents of sexual violence” and allowed for support to be offered even if there was no formal complaint. The system would also provide “as complete a picture as possible about alleged incidents”.
Extract from COMMENTS:
MQ
This looks on the surface to be outrageous, but may well be effective as long as the accusees remain anonymous as well. Ms. Alpha lodges a complaint against Mr. Beta. If, within a short time, another complaint is lodged against Mr. Beta, an investigation begins. It should at least be a deterrent for all but the most sex-crazed predators
Rory Connor - replying to MQ
(i) And what if Ms Alpha tells her friends MS Gamma, Delta, Epsilon etc what she has done and encourages them to make lying anonymous complaints against the same guy in support? Will there be ANY stage at which the College authorities refer this to police as a criminal conspiracy? OR will they make a private decision to ignore complaints that seem frivolous?
(ii)There is also the question of libel - which doesn't necessarily mean a false allegation has to be broadcast to the nation. A female student who tells College authorities that she has been sexually assaulted by a male student at the same College, IS going to affect the attitude of the authorities to that student!
Again this online accusation system is being set up for the benefit of female students at "Rhode Island's oldest Ivy League University" too embarrassed to talk about sex. Should they be at University at all?
This is Eugene Jordan, past President of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society being interviewed by Niall McConnell of SÃol na hÉireann on 15 February 2021. The topics include naming and shaming the politicians who spread false information regarding the deaths of children, comparing religious run Homes to secular County Homes plus the living and social conditions in Ireland during the first half of the 20th century.
Eugene: Irish politicians took the word "Marasmus", which appeared as a cause of death on a small number of death certificates as evidence of starvation. It was a lie, and that has been proven in the Final Report of Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. Will politicians have the guts to do the right thing and apologise for misleading the people?
(A) Eugene Jordan: Politicians and "Children Starved to Death"
The following quotations are from Eugene Jordan's website FALSE HISTORY DEBUNKED and specifically from his article Political Fantasy – Children Starved to Death The first quote is from Chapter 33: Deaths of the Final Report of the Commission - concerning the Marasmus issue
33. 5. Some commentators have concluded that infant deaths which occurred in mother and baby homes due to marasmus indicates that infants were neglected, not appropriately cared for, and/or wilfully starved to death in these institutions.
However, marasmus was a frequently cited cause of infant deaths in institutional, hospital and community settings in early twentieth-century Ireland. The Commission considers it unlikely that deaths in hospitals and family homes were due to wilful neglect and socannot conclude that the term marasmus denotes wilful neglect in mother and baby homes. The more likely explanation is that marasmus as a cause of death was cited when an infant failed to thrive due to malabsorption of essential nutrients due to an underlying, undiagnosed medical condition.
In 1939, the State’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer visited Bethany and attributed the ill health of children – rickets, scalding and purulent conjunctivitis – in the home to the fact that they were “illegitimate” and, therefore, “delicate” and prone to starvation. Are the Minister of State and the Government supporting that view in 2013?
The State colluded. In 1939, for example, the deputy chief medical adviser, Dr. Winslow Sterling Berry, dismissed public concerns and even the concerns of his own health inspectors, by claiming that it was “well known that illegitimate children are delicate and marasmic” – in other words, that they suffered from starvation.
Deputy Niall Collins (Fianna Fáil)
Records reveal that 54 of the children had died from convulsions, 41 from heart failure and 26 from marasmus, a form of malnutrition.
Sterling Berry, in 1939. In his report, Berry reported that it was well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children were delicate and marasmic, which means they were suffering the effects of starvation. I stress that this is from the report of an inspection of the home by the State. Was the State involved, was it indifferent to their plight and did the State fail them? The answer is obviously “Yes”.
Cemetery records indicate that the causes of death included 54 from convulsions, 41 from heart failure, 26 from starvation and seven from pneumonia.
[NOTE: the death certs record marasmus not starvation]
Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 11 Jun 2014 Death and Burial of Children in Mother and Baby Homes: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]
Deputy Seamus Healy (Independent)
State inspection reports described children as being fragile, pot-bellied and emaciated. Cause of death was regularly recorded as starvation. [NO marasmus]
Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett (Solidarity–People Before Profit)
Children died of starvation or were used as guinea pigs, while families were ripped apart. It is an appalling stain on our history.
Deputy Ciara Conway (Labour Party)
Young women were forcibly separated first from their communities, then from any sense of pride or self worth and then from their babies. Their babies were neglected and starved, with illnesses untreated. They were seen as worthless and buried, ultimately, in unmarked graves, left in the end without even an identity.
Women’s children were starved and disease, including TB, was rampant. The child mortality rate was massively higher in these institutions than among the general public and the State allowed this to go on.
Seanad Éireann debate – Tuesday, 27 Jan 2015 Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes: Motion
Senator Marie Moloney (Labour) State inspection reports described children as being fragile, emaciated and pot-bellied. Cause of death was often recorded as starvation. [NO: marasmus]
Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 9 Mar 2017: Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements
Deputy Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fáil) What was uncovered in Tuam is only the tip of the iceberg. We do not know exactly how these babies died and it seems likely they were left to starve or die in the cold, as the mortality rate is too high to suggest otherwise.
Deputy Mick Barry (Irish Solidarity–People Before Profit) According to a former chief medical officer of the State, James Deeny, in his autobiography, To Cure and to Care, in one year alone, of the 180 children born in the home 100 died. One in five of those who died in the 1934 to 1953 period died of marasmus, that is, severe malnutrition.
Seanad Éireann debate – Thursday, 9 Mar 2017 Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements
Senator Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)[Daughter of President Michael D Higgins]
There were 472 deaths in 19 years in the Bessborough home. Some 80 of those children were suffering from marasmus, which means severe malnutrition, including babies who have in many cases been taken away from the arms of their mothers, who have not been allowed to breast-feed them. Children suffering from malnutrition – an issue which is easy to control, deal with and address – represent almost 20% of known deaths in a short period in the Bessborough home alone, as we heard in the story earlier.
Senator Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) Women were starved, neglected and hidden from society. They suffered horrendous abuse. It is imperative that we now respond with sensitivity and respect to what has been unearthed.
Dáil Éireann debate – Tuesday, 7 Mar 2017: Leaders’ Questions
The Taoiseach (Enda Kenny, Fine Gael) We gave them up because of our perverse, in fact, morbid relationship with what is called respectability. Indeed, for a while it seemed as if in Ireland our women had the amazing capacity to self-impregnate. For their trouble, we took their babies and gifted them, sold them, trafficked them, starved them, neglected them or denied them to the point of their disappearance from our hearts, our sight, our country and, in the case of Tuam and possibly other places, from life itself.
Dáil Éireann debate – Wednesday, 22 Mar 2017: Commission of Investigation Announcement on Tuam Mother and Baby Home: Statements (Resumed)
Deputy Seán Crowe (Sinn Fein) They have come up to me and started telling the story of what they went through – the starvation, abuse, malnutrition and the fact their spirit was broken. That is what we did. We stripped people and took their clothes away. We took their identity, beat them and starved them. This was all done for what was supposed to be the greater good of some individuals or idea.
Dáil Éireann debate – Thursday, 18 Jan 2018: Report of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution: Statements (Resumed)
Deputy Kate O’Connell (Fine Gael) We murdered them in their hundreds through neglect and hate, brutalised them in the name of salvation and enslaved them in the name of redemption.
My Comment: Most of this hysteria is coming from Sinn Fein, Labour and Independent Deputies - precisely the people who re likely to form a Government following the next General Election in Ireland. However they are ably backed by Fine Gael including former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and the craziest comment of all comes from former Fine Gael Deputy Kate O'Connell. If Sinn Fein come to power and try to use undemocratic methods to implement populist but unviable economic polices, Fine Gael don't have the moral courage to stop them.
(B) The Ravings of Junior Minister John Halligan - AND the Media
Some of the above can be (partly) explained by confusion concerning the meaning of the term "Marasmus" - that does not indicate deliberate starvation by nuns, or anyone else. However a more generic kind of hysteria is also loose in this country. Fine Gael Deputy Kate O'Connell exemplifies it (last quote above) as does former Junior Minister (for Training and Skills) John Halligan. See Irish Times article dated 11 March 2017 "Death Rates in Mother and Baby Homes similar to Concentration Camps’" subtitled "Minister of State John Halligan says Old Age should not Diminish Responsibility for a Crime"
Independent Alliance minister John Halligan has compared child mortality rates in mother and baby homes to Nazi concentration camps. The Waterford TD also said religious orders found guilty of criminal neglect should have their assets seized. The Minister of State for Training and Skills said elderly nuns who worked in the homes should be interviewed as part of expected criminal investigations to be conducted by gardaÃ.
“Old age should not diminish accountability for any crime or alleged crime. If you bear in mind that the child mortality rate at Bessborough in 1943 was approaching 70 per cent, sure that’s similar to concentration camps,” he said. “Are we seriously saying that because somebody is ill or aged that we shouldn’t at least interview them? If you look at what’s happened at Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, even up to last year individuals who are alleged to have carried out horrendous crimes in their 80s and 90s were interviewed.”
Mr Halligan was speaking to RTÉ Radio on Saturday in the wake of confirmation last week from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission that “significant quantities” of human remains found at a mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secours Sisters belonged to young infants. Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone is said to be considering broadening the commission of inquiry’s remit to include other homes beyond Tuam, and will examine her options over the coming weeks.
Referring to State grants paid to the Bon Secours order for maintenance of children in its care as well as sums received through the sale of children to foster parents in the US, Mr Halligan said monies should be seized if significant wrongdoing is established. “I think there has to be an investigation, everybody has to be interviewed, and if it is found that they’re guilty of neglect, well their assets should be seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau, ” he said.
Much of this hysteria was whipped up by the media with politicians jumping on the band-wagon to get votes (although I doubt if people like John Halligan and Kate O'Connell needed any encouragement). I wrote about the media background in "Open Letter to Archbishop Michael Neary regarding Tuam Home" It includes an 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.
During the course of the article Emer O'Kelly trice denounces the Good Shepherd Sisters i.e. the wrong nuns!
The demonising of the nuns is not confined to bigoted anti-clerics: "Progressive" priests who like to make themselves popular with the media also get in on the act. On 1 June 2014 Fr Brian D’Arcy had an article in the Sunday World entitled “Fr Brian: Baby Graves are Our Greatest Crime” that begins as follows:
“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…..”
It's in no way surprising that four weeks later the same same Sunday World carried an article subtitled “Councillor Seeking Justice For ‘Murder’ of Babies" It includes THIS:
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.
The claims of child murder (and dumping babies in a cess pit) are complete lunacy comparable to the 19th century hysteria in Canada over the "Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" that also involved claims of infanticide by nuns in Montreal. As per the Wikipedia article on Maria Monk: "If the sexual union produced a baby, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement." Of course all Catholic priests and bishops denounced the allegations and supported the nuns at the time. "Progressive" priests and Bishops (like recently retired Archbishop Diarmuid Martin) who endorse secular anti-clericalism are a modern phenomena!
(C) Commission Acknowledges Existence of False Allegations!
The Mother and Baby Homes Commission actually acknowledges that some allegations of abuse are false! This is a surprise to me given that the Ryan Commission (to which I gave evidence) did no such thing. An article in the Irish Times by Patsy McGarry dated 14 January 2021 headed "Commission dealt with 1.3m documents and held 195 hearings" has as its subheading "Report from body states that its conclusions ‘may not accord with prevailing narrative’" and begins
The Mother and Baby Homes Commission states in bold type in its report that “the conclusions it reaches may not always accord with the prevailing narrative”. As well as adhering to its terms of reference, it says: “It must look at all the available evidence and reach conclusions based on that evidence. It must be objective, rigorous and thorough........”
The confidential committee report “outlines the experiences of those who chose to recount their experiences. They are not a representative sample of the residents of the institutions under investigation,” it said. And while there was “no doubt that the witnesses recounted their experiences as honestly as possible”, it had “concerns about the contamination of some evidence. A number of witnesses gave evidence that was clearly incorrect. This contamination probably occurred because of meetings with other residents and inaccurate media coverage,” it said.
(D) Bethany Mother and Baby Home - a PROTESTANT Institution
I was slightly surprised to see that the Protestant Bethany Home was also the subject of false allegations of starving children - coming mainly (of course) from Sinn Fein but Deputy Niall Collins of Fianna Fail makes a contribution as well by referring to Marasmus as "a form of malnutrition"., This seems to be the sole Fianna Fail contribution to this brand of hysteria. It does indicate that irrational attacks on the Catholic Church have a way of spreading.- and corrupting the entire society.
However the Catholic Church was always the main focus of attack - as pointed out by David Quinn in article in the Irish Independent on 10 March 2017 Harsh Victorian Morality at Core of Mother and Baby Home Scandals He contrasts the attitude of politicians to the Tuam Home run by Bon Secours Sisters vis a vis the Bethany Home. First he quotes the words of the then Fine Gael Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in the Dail (Irish Parliament) that week:
"Tuam is not just a burial ground, it is a social and cultural sepulchre. That is what it is. As a society in the so-called 'good old days', we did not just hide away the dead bodies of tiny human beings, we dug deep and deeper still to bury our compassion, our mercy and our humanity itself. No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns' care."
David Quinn points out that our Prime Minister's tone and his words contrasted very sharply with those of the Labour Party's Kathleen Lynch in 2013 when she addressed the Dáil about Bethany Home, which also housed unmarried mothers and their babies. Ms Lynch, then the junior minister in the Department of Justice, used much softer language than the Taoiseach, even though hundreds of babies also died in Bethany Home and were buried in an unmarked grave.
Explaining the high death rate in the Protestant-run institution she said: "Unfortunately, poverty and disease were commonplace in Ireland up to the 1950s and this was reflected in infant mortality rates. Infant mortality rates in the 1940s were at a level that is hard to comprehend today, about 20 times higher than now and that figure applies across the entire population. For those who were malnourished and subject to disease and a lack of hygiene, the figures would have been higher still."
Responding to critics of the home, she said: "Our Constitution demands we respect the rules of natural justice. People are entitled to a fair hearing and an opportunity to protect their good name…it seems to have been accepted at the time that Bethany Home was run by people with charitable motives."
It's clear that different moral standards are being applied to Catholic and non-Catholic institutions and personnel. However it seems to me that the differences are lessening now as society becomes more secular and ALL forms of Christianity are coming under attack from politicians who stand for nothing and therefore concentrate on spewing hatred at their religious adversaries!
(E) My Conclusion - Blood Libel Forever?
(i) This hysteria can be said to have begun in 1997 with an article in The Mirror (by their Irish editor Neil Leslie) entitled 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. concerning the death of baby Marion Howe in 1955 i.e. 42 years previously. THAT libel was aimed at the Sisters of Mercy and specifically at the late Sister Xavieria Lally. However in subsequent years the MAIN targets were the Christian Brothers. Leaders of four "Victim" groups were quoted in the media as claiming that the Brothers had killed boys in their care, especially in Artane and Letterfrack industrial schools. A number of these allegations related to periods when no boy died of ANY cause (!) so I coined the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". For obvious reasons accusers did not normally state the names of the killer Brothers! The initial phase of our Blood Libel hysteria may be said to have ended in 2009/10 with a Garda investigation into claims that the Catholic Church colluded with Garda authorities in the case of the unsolved murder of schoolgirl Bernadette Connolly in 1970. The immediate targets of the child murder claim were members of the Passionist Order but the suggestion was that Archbishop John Charles McQuaid intervened to stop the Garda investigation.
(ii) Over the years I thought on a few occasions, that the Blood Libel hysteria was played out. The above article was based on one I submitted to the Sunday Tribune in 2006; this related mainly to the Christian Brothers and the Murder of the Undead claims. I had to update it following the manufactured hysteria in 2009 concerning the death of Bernadette Connolly, four decades previously - and for a time I thought THAT was the end! I once wrote that Blood Libel in Ireland followed a logical trajectory in that
it began in 1997 with an allegation that related to the death of a REAL baby - because Blood Libel was new in Ireland and needed the appearance of credibility
it came to an end in 2010 with reference to the unsolved murder of a REAL child - because several claims had been refuted and credibility was again a factor BUT
between these two dates, anti-clerical Hysteria reigned supreme and journalists thought they could get away with anything including "Murder of the Undead" allegations!
Even THAT cynical analysis now looks too hopeful with allegations that nuns starved babies in the Mother and Baby Homes. The fact that the Report of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes refuted those claims, won't put a stop to our anti-clerical hysteria, if the history of the last quarter-century is anything to go by.
(iii) The chief proponents of the death by starvation narrative were Sinn Fein (including leader Mary Lou McDonald) and other left-wing Deputies and Senators -- including Senator Alice-Mary Higgins (Ind) the daughter of President Michael D Higgins. These are the people who are likely to form a Government after the next General Election (given that we are now governed by a coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Greens). However the anti-clerical hysteria promoted by Sinn Fein was echoed by Fine Gael - including their former leader and Taoiseach Enda Kenny. The most grotesque comment of all was actually made by then Fine Gael Deputy Kate O'Connell:
We murdered them in their hundreds through neglect and hate, brutalised them in the name of salvation and enslaved them in the name of redemption.
What sort of Opposition are Fine Gael going to provide to a Government dominated by Sinn Fein? If Sinn Fein try to pass dubious legislation, is President Michael D going to refer it to the Supreme Court (given his expressed admiration for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez)? I have written about this issue at the end of my article "EU Commissioner Phil Hogan Forced to Resign...." - section (F) "Conclusion: Sinn Fein and Antifa"
(iv)Forthcoming Book by Eugene Jordan "The Irish Attack on Christianity - The Case for the Defence"
In March 2021 a book by Eugene Jordan with the above title is due to be published. He writes that Irish Christianity has been under attack for more than seven decades now. The attacks increased in ferocity in the second decade of the twenty-first century and reached an extraordinary level of frenzy when Christian-run Mother and Baby homes were accused of starving and murdering children in their care. These allegations are lies, the evidence to disprove the falsehoods is abundant and simple to understand, yet the Irish political establishment and media have chosen to ignore it.
The book essentially tells the story of how the Irish came to hate the Irish - especially the Catholic Church - and thrashes out the causes at the court of reason.
As Ireland enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it stands at the most embarrassing moment in its intellectual history. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes finished and published its final report, which has again been subject to biased misreporting. The commission has rubbished many of the scandal propagators’ notorious claims to their credit but has made several significant errors of its own.
In a sermon in the Cathedral of the Assumption, Tuam on 11 March 2017 you asked - in relation to the women and children of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam: “How could the culture of Irish society, which purported to be defined by Christian values, have allowed itself to behave in such a manner towards our most vulnerable?”
I would answer the Archbishop as follows: The late Pablo McCabe was a homeless schizophrenic man who presumably qualified as one of “our most vulnerable” and former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall was hardly a member of high society. McCabe had no money but prior to 1999 no woman had ever been convicted of rape so McCabe was accused to make the allegation appear more plausible. The leaders of the Sisters of Mercy betrayed both of them and sided with the accusers. Archbishop what makes you think that the current accusers are more plausible? Do you really find it acceptable that a Government Minister [John Halligan] should refer to Nazis and talk about Belsen, Auschwitz and Dachau? Archbishop, if a Garda investigation into the Tuam Home produces no evidence to support such claims will you do or say anything at all? Or will you remain silent like the current leaders of the Sisters of Mercy?
My response to you forms part of Comment 53 in the article (Don't worry - I don't include all the comments!). The preceding Comment 52 summaries the scandal surrounding the wrongful convictions of Pablo McCabe and former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall AND also the paranoid utterances of former Junior Minister John Halligan.
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.
During the course of the article Emer O'Kelly trice denounces the Good Shepherd Sisters i.e. the wrong nuns!(NOTE [1] )
Thus It's hardly surprising to read in a recent article in the Irish Times by Stephanie Walsh a retired teacher who specialised in Relationships and Sexuality Education. Good work of religious in aiding single mothers now largely forgotten (subtitle "In the 1970s church people provided more assistance to women in need than secular society")
Some years ago I met a Good Shepherd Sister who had placed women with us. I asked why the Sisters hadn’t publicly defended the important role they had played in improving the lives of single pregnant women. She answered that it was impossible to get a fair hearing in the media that had demonised all religious involved in that work.
In my experience, church women and men provided more assistance to women in need in the 70s than did the secular community. Most of the social workers who contacted our family were religious Sisters; many of the women in trouble were referred by priests.
The demonising of the nuns is not confined to bigoted anti-clerics: "Progressive" priests who like to make themselves popular with the media also get in on the act. In June 2014 Fr Brian D’Arcy had an article in the Sunday World 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…..” etc
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") (NOTE [2] )
In contrast with this you have Irish atheist and editor of the SpikedOnLine magazine Brendan O'Neill who wrote an article on 9 June 2014 “The Tuam Tank: Another Myth about Evil Ireland” with subtitle “The obsession with Ireland’s dark past has officially become unhinged.” He quotes some of the world-wide headlines:
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. ......The blogosphere and Twitter hordes went even further than the mainstream media, with whispers about the 800 babies having been murdered by the nuns and demands for the UN to investigate ‘crimes against humanity’ in Tuam.
Unlike Fr Brian, Brendan O'Neill believes it is nonsense. However it certainly wasn't just "Twitter hordes" that suggested the nuns murdered babies. The Sunday World - for which Fr Brian has written for many years - had a story on 29 June 2014 subtitled “Councillor Seeking Justice For ‘Murder’ of Babies” about then 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.
The claims of child murder and dumping babies in a cess pit are complete lunacy comparable to the 19th century hysteria in Canada over the "Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk" that also involved claims of infanticide by nuns in Montreal. The difference is that then, Catholic Bishops and clergy stood firmly in support of the nuns whereas now you are silent when not actively throwing them to the wolves!
To answer your question
So to answer your question: How could the culture of Irish society, which purported to be defined by Christian values, have allowed itself to behave in such a manner towards our most vulnerable?” Before you respond to the publication of the Report on Mother and Babies Homes today,perhaps you will take time to consider just WHO are the "vulnerable" ones here? Is it the "Survivors" backed by all the power of Media and State or the nuns in general, and the Bon Secours Sisters in particular, who have been subjected to obscene abuse - up to and including Blood Libel?
Yours sincerely,
Rory Connor
PS You are well aware of the lie spread worldwide by the media a few years ago that the Catholic Church refused to baptise the children of unmarried mothers and the apology issued by Associated Press at the behest of the Jesuit Magazine "America": Tuam Babies and Associated Press Apology to Bon Secours Sisters It was a lie directed at your own predecessors more than at the Bon Secours Sisters but most journalists were probably too ignorant to realise this! It doesn't measure up to the Nazi Nun claims but it is important because it can be PROVEN false - even 60 years after the Tuam Home closed.
NOTES
[1] AndTHISis Emer O'Kelly writing about Nora Wall (extract from the Wikipedia article on Nora). It's clear that her rant against the Bon Secours/Good Shepherd nuns was not an aberration!
On 28 November 1999, the Sunday Independent published an article entitled "Judge reflects a nation's outrage" by columnist Emer O'Kelly. The title refers to the sentencing by Judge Anthony Murphy of a Brother of Charity to 36 years imprisonment for the physical and sexual abuse of children. However the article contains these words about the Nora Wall case:
When the former Mercy nun Nora Wall was vindicated, and an announcement was made that she was not to be retried for rape, there was an outcry from some members of the public about the way she had been vilified before her conviction was set aside. The horrible reality of our society is that so many appalling crimes of abuse of children by Catholic religious have been proved in the courts that many people are inclined to believe that no cleric, man or woman, accused of such crimes can possibly be innocent.And that is not the fault of public opinion. It is in large measure the fault of the religious authorities who seem more concerned with limiting the damage to their own reputations and standing than in acknowledging their collective guilt and active negligence.
[ Emer O'Kelly has, of course, nothing to say about Nora's co-accused, homeless schizophrenic Pablo McCabe who was accused solely in order to make Ireland's first rape allegation against a woman, look more plausible! RC ]
He has called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
“It’s not just a sinful approach to life it’s also a serious crime. This seems to have been self-imposed and cruel and ruthless and therefore needs investigated. I presume some of the people from that era are still alive and need to be brought to justice for that. We cannot claim to be pro-life and allow that to happen to children. We need to establish the facts of what did happen but it seems to me that over a short period of life over 800 people weren’t even given recorded deaths, some of whom seem to have died from starvation."
