Mass grave of children and infants in Tuam, Co. Galway.

[Traitorfish]

^ Sad. How can the country start to heal if this is just swept away again?

The Irish don't much go in for healing. They've only just started to considering basing their political system around something other than a civil war that ended ninety years ago.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I admire your confidence in the Church. A confidence that has proven misplaced until pope Francis took action upon being elected.

Bergoglio has so far taken no action that deviated from the previous popes. He is even saying the exact same stuff as Ratzinger and Wotylja (sorry for the lack of spelling, my Polish is bad), just that he has a better PR voice so is getting away with it (for now).

Even in the matter of the sex abuse scandal the church is still doing far too little, keeping accused clergy free instead of properly cooperating with law authorities, and asking for forgiveness instead of doing anything concrete to solve the crisis. The fact of the matter is that the rcc is still acting with the same arrogance and entitlelment it has done since the high middle ages, and still going about its business as if it were above the law.

There will be no change to the methods or the manner of the rcc under the current pope, and short of the whole organisation being wound up, there never will be.

Is there a lot of background on Frances Fitzgerald TD, or is it reasonably safe to assume angelmaking hands are going to find their ways into the pockets of the minister?

She's the former Minister for Children with repsonsibility for investigating* the 25,000 reports from these places that her department received back in 2011. To show the level of her commitment, it is only in the last few weeks that we knew that the department had received so many reports, she went on record (in the Dáil IIRC) as saying her civil servants had received only 2,000 and the rest had gone missing.

*Not personally, obviously. I'm not that cruel to expect that.

I beg to differ. A mortality rate of over 60% is not typical for any school, Catholic or otherwise. It's literally the equivalent of a Nazi death camp.

First things first, these places weren't schools. They were supposed to be homes for unmarried mothers and their children, but like the workhouses operated on the principle of "punishing the victims for the crimes committed on them". Here's some posts in the thread which originated the petition I advertised in the first post, the whole thread is worth reading, but the individual posts detail some of the evidence on death rates in these places.

Edit: sorry for the triple post. Was doing a bit of back reading.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

I'm more impressed by Timtofly somehow managing to imply the mothers were sluts.

 

[Agent327]

First things first, these places weren't schools. They were supposed to be homes for unmarried mothers and their children, but like the workhouses operated on the principle of "punishing the victims for the crimes committed on them". Here's some posts in the thread which originated the petition I advertised in the first post, the whole thread is worth reading, but the individual posts detail some of the evidence on death rates in these places.

The schools were an example Mr Willem brought up to imply things weren't so bad in Tuam. But enough of that.

I noticed the OP link didn't work for me and found another source which picked up the story: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/irel...ns-must-spark-urgent-investigation-2014-06-05

 

[Yeekim]

For the record, I think we should cut Willem some slack.
800 dead children obviously feels like an awful lot, and conditions of their burial are appalling.
But we don't know the actual mortality rate in the institution nor how it actually compares to national average at the time. Over the span of 36 years, that is "just" ~22 deaths per year, while records show the place could house hundreds of children at once.
I looked around and found an article that discusses life conditions and mortality rates in contemporary Ireland: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3053035/
Figure 1 shows infant mortality rates which peak at over 8%, but we don't know how many children actually lived to become adults.
Now, factor in susceptibility to contagious diseases in a place like this and probable tendencies to prefer prayers to medication...

 

[timtofly]

I'm more impressed by Timtofly somehow managing to imply the mothers were sluts.

Are you implying that they were nurses at an abortion clinic?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

For the record, I think we should cut Willem some slack.
800 dead children obviously feels like an awful lot, and conditions of their burial are appalling.
But we don't know the actual mortality rate in the institution nor how it actually compares to national average at the time. Over the span of 36 years, that is "just" ~22 deaths per year, while records show the place could house hundreds of children at once.
I looked around and found an article that discusses life conditions and mortality rates in contemporary Ireland: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3053035/
Figure 1 shows infant mortality rates which peak at over 8%, but we don't know how many children actually lived to become adults.
Now, factor in susceptibility to contagious diseases in a place like this and probable tendencies to prefer prayers to medication...

Regardless of how the children died, they did not get a dignified burial/cremation. Instead, they were literally tossed into a dump.

Are you implying that they were nurses at an abortion clinic?

Are you implying that nurses who work at abortion clinics are sluts?

 

[timtofly]

Only if you are implying that nurses are continuously being raped.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

^Look, I don't understand how you went from unwed mothers to nurses at abortion clinics being sluts and continuously being raped. Would you care to explain this progression?

 

[Yeekim]

Regardless of how the children died, they did not get a dignified burial/cremation. Instead, they were literally tossed into a dump.

Yeah, I said the burial conditions were appalling.
Although while searching around for mortality statistics, I stumbled upon this article:

Spoiler :

The reports focused on the burial of the children in unmarked graves, with much coverage focusing on claims that some bodies were interred in a former septic tank.

O’Neill said that the facts in the case have been wildly distorted.

“The septic tank or the grounds of the former home have not been excavated. No babies have been ‘found in a septic tank’, as the Washington Post, The Guardian and others claimed. The claim that the babies were ‘dumped’ into some kind of sewage system is wrong, too,” he said.

Corless has also clarified her research, telling the Irish Times that she never said the bodies had been “dumped.”

Some bodies were reportedly uncovered by children in the 1970s. One of the children, Barry Sweeney, recounted the discovery he made at the age of 10 when he and another child lifted a concrete slab in the burial grounds. He said he saw about 20 unwrapped skeletal remains laid haphazardly in the crypt. Corless speculated that the crypt was a former septic tank.

O’Neill countered several depictions of Corless’ research in the media.

“The claim that the babies were ‘dumped’ in a tank is not true, according to Corless herself. And the notion that the babies were hurled in with sewage is not correct – apparently the tank had been turned into a crypt,” he said.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cathol...ms-crazed-claims-about-ireland-child-burials/
No idea who is right here, really.
EDIT: Which is why a proper investigation is called for, obviously.

 

[timtofly]

^Look, I don't understand how you went from unwed mothers to nurses at abortion clinics being sluts and continuously being raped. Would you care to explain this progression?

I am being accused of implying they were sluts, when I did no such thing. I was pointing out that the males responsible have yet to be vilified, while every one else was vilifying the system. I was attempting to avoid painting the victims (single moms) as being accused of wrong doing.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Whatever you intended, that's not how it came out.

 

[timtofly]

Whatever you intended, that's not how it came out.

Did you read post #62, #63, #70, and #75? Which may not even make sense as seeing how a lot of this thread has been deleted.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

74 posts and we have yet to throw disgust at the mechanism that allowed single mothers to keep getting pregnant over and over again?

that would have been the social and religious intolerance to birth control at that time, would it?...

Only if it included religious tolerance for continuous sex out of wedlock. What about plan A? Puts a new twist to the "sins of the fathers".

well for a country that had religious running of their health and education systems, they apparently had continuos sex out of wedlock anyway, the scandal over treatment of babies and children seems entirely true to their lack of religious tolerance as you say, so I reluctantly agree with your point that they lacked religious tolerance...

Okay... so where do the nurses at abortion clinics come into it, or that they were continuously raped?

 

[timtofly]

I just asked Mr. Nick an irrational question, to see if I could get a response. I then answered your question with an irrational question linking it back to the point in which I was being accused.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Oh. So you were just asking irrational questions and don't really have any coherent explanation for how they fit in with the rest of the conversation?

 

[timtofly]

Oh. So you were just asking irrational questions and don't really have any coherent explanation for how they fit in with the rest of the conversation?

I probably could have withheld a response. That is one of the basic choices offered in these threads. My question was not that far off topic though. It was just irrational. There are abortion clinics that have been accused of doing the same thing for the same reason, under the same circumstances. That is why they are supposed to be regulated and governmentally inspected. Some even get shut down. I realize that this was not an abortion clinic, and it may turn out that these women were not even the mothers of the dead infants. That would make it even more bizarre and sad that there were males and females elsewhere forcing these poor women and children to go through such circumstances.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

The petition was handed in to Leinster House today, received by Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald TD with nearly 27,500 signatures attached.

There are currently nearly 30,300 signatures to the petition.

My thanks to all who signed.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm more impressed by Timtofly somehow managing to imply the mothers were sluts.

That's not the worst. On the boards.ie where the petition originated we had a user come out and say, literally, that the women in these places and their children were "the dregs of society", and not in a way that the poster was trying to say "they were thought the dregs of society back then" it was a straight out accusation.

For the record, I think we should cut Willem some slack.
800 dead children obviously feels like an awful lot, and conditions of their burial are appalling.
But we don't know the actual mortality rate in the institution nor how it actually compares to national average at the time. Over the span of 36 years, that is "just" ~22 deaths per year, while records show the place could house hundreds of children at once.

We do, the death rate in these places was between three times the national average and five times. In Bessborough in Cork in one year alone 100 out of 180 children died because of neglect according to the chief medical officer for the county of Cork at that time. The place in Tuam that sparked this outrage was in fact one of the less murderous mother and baby homes and yet still managed to kill 796 children whose remains are unaccounted for to this very day.

Yeah, I said the burial conditions were appalling.
Although while searching around for mortality statistics, I stumbled upon this article:

I would respectfully ask you to retract your reproduction of said article, as even a cursory listen to the accompanying video (actually, do you know what? Here's the transcript of the video. Find one line that agrees with Rosita Boland's conclusion in the IT article, and I'll award you the Order of the Garter) would show that Corless has been both misquoted and her actual words have been vicously misrepresented by the author of the article in what is nothing more than a despicable attempt at minimising the actual crime against humanity carried out by the rcc in Tuam and throughout Ireland, by trying to discredit a tiny detail in the story while not doing anything to respond to the substance of the claims. This story written by what was once the only repsectable paper in Ireland, and the only one willing to stand up (on occasion) to the elites which bedevilled my country, is fuel to the fire of those who don't want the scandals of the church to be investigated and just swept under the carpet.

 

[Yeekim]

We do, the death rate in these places was between three times the national average and five times. In Bessborough in Cork in one year alone 100 out of 180 children died because of neglect according to the chief medical officer for the county of Cork at that time. The place in Tuam that sparked this outrage was in fact one of the less murderous mother and baby homes and yet still managed to kill 796 children whose remains are unaccounted for to this very day.

Three times the national average is pretty brutal, especially given the already horrible national average...

by trying to discredit a tiny detail in the story.

I agree that the conditions of burial are very much insignificant in the big picture of things. Still, I think rcc is entitled to set that detail straight. Even if by doing that they tacitly demonstrate they have nothing to say to change the big picture.