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Welcome for children's rights referendum in Ireland printable version

24 Sep 2012: posted by the editor - Ireland

Joint statement from Westbank Orphanage Survivors Group and Bethany Home Survivors Group
State must admit fault in relation to Bethany Home and Westbank Orphanage
As a former residents of Westbank Orphanage Greystones Co Wicklow and Bethany Home Dublin we welcome the children's rights referendum in the Republic of Ireland. We hope its successful enactment will prevent in future the type of abuse we suffered.

The bodies on 219 Bethany children born between 1922 and 1949 lie in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. The state's Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Dr Winslow Sterling Berry, explained why while visiting Bethany in 1939. It was 'well known', he said, that 'Illegitimate' children were 'delicate' and starving. Over one third of the 219 children died between 1935-39.

That was in the 1930s and 1940s when the state washed its statutory hands of responsibility. However, right up to closure in 1998, in Westbank Orphanage children suffered physical plus sexual abuse and were used as child labour on farms and in shops in Northern Ireland. Their names were changed to that of the owner, the late Adeline Mathers.

A Westbank child died in suspicious circumstances on 27 September 1971 (aged 8) and the state did nothing.

A Westbank child was pushed from a train in November 1977 and suffered sever brain injuries. The state did nothing.

Some criticism is emerging to the effect that the referendum provisions might give the state too much power over the family.

The Irish state exercised no such power over Bethany Home (closed in 1972) or over the orphan 'family' in Westbank (closed in 1998). They were treated, like the family, as private institutions with no public accountability. They were left to their own devices as Protestant Evangelical institutions. That was state policy. It was enunciated and repeated in the Cussen report in 1937, the Kennedy report in 1970 and in the recent Ryan Commission report into institutional child abuse. Problematic Protestants were privatised.

Westbank was an 'orphanage' where it was almost impossible to adopt a child, unless prospective parents conformed to Miss Mathers' interpretation of God's plan for human kind. There were exceptions. Colm Begely's half brother Andrew was forcibly extracted (literally) from Westbank by people who became his loving adoptive parents in Northern Ireland. Colm and Andrew only became aware years later that they were half-brothers. Even twins in Westbank were denied knowledge of sibling relationships.

Westbank children were paraded as orphans in front of church goers in Northern Ireland, as well as in the orphanage itself. Children learned which adults they should attempt to avoid during these encounters. They were expected to perform party pieces in the expectation that this would stimulate the charitable sentiments of onlookers. It did but the money raised and new goods and toys donated were not for the benefit of the children. There was a scam involved. Toys, electrical goods and clothes disappeared soon after they were sometimes donated by the busload. Westbank children have vivid memories of being given a new toy by a benefactor that was later snatched by Miss Mathers, sometimes replaced (after sufficient crying) by an and older version of the toy, with a limb or another part missing.

The state should exercise power over those in the family or in institutions who abuse children. The state is required to exercise its powers. In our case it did not, as was also the case with the Bethany Home, Dublin. That has to change.

Unfortunately, there is no sign of change as the Minister for Justice continues to sit on a decision whether to compensate children for injustices suffered in former Protestant institutions such as the Bethany Home. The state continues to ignore the scandal of Westbank records removed from PACT, the former Protestant Adoption Society, by Westbank Trustees in Bray Gospel Hall. The trustees have no training in the care of confidential material and are reluctant to give information to former Westbank residents.

The state should start to show some good intent by having the our confidential records removed to a trustworthy neutral location in which we can exercise control over our own personal information.

Bethany Home Survivors Group
Westbank Survivors Group

Tags: Bethany Home, Westbank Orphanage

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