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Terms of reference for mother and baby homes inquiry "unacceptable" printable version

14 Jan 2015: posted by the editor - Ireland

A group representing orphanage survivors say they have serious reservations about the recently published draft terms of reference of the forthcoming southern Irish inquiry into mother and baby homes, and related matters.

In a statement released today the group say: "We have every confidence in the capacity of the distinguished members of commission to investigate. We are not confident that the commission will be allowed to examine lives blighted outside institutions where unmarried mothers were forced to abandon their children.

"The terms of reference mention 'exit pathways' from mother & baby homes. It is not clear if such pathways will lead up the entrance path of similarly dysfunctional institutions to which abandoned children were sent.

"For example, some of the undersigned were sent from Bethany Home to the Westbank Orphanage in Wicklow that had the same Protestant fundamentalist ethos as Bethany. The orphanage had one main purpose: to raise money for the institution and one main effect: the denial of a right of adoption to most children. Children were paraded in front of gullible but sincere church congregations in Northern Ireland as the south's poor Protestant orphans. We were in fact exploited unpaid professional orphans, illegally transported back and forth over the border. Some 'children' remained in Westbank into their 20s. Many suffered systemic physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

"We insist on being allowed to tell the Commission of Inquiry our experiences. If we succeed, and lives of children who arrived from Bethany are examined, that will leave those who arrived from other 'pathways'. They arrived sometimes directly from maternity hospitals or from the Braemar House Mother and Baby Home Cork which (unaccountably) is not listed in the terms of reference. Their situation too should be investigated. Similarly, the exit pathway from the Church of Ireland Magdalen Home to its associated Nursery Rescue Society, that farmed out children from the age of three, should also be examined.

"We demand to know why we were abandoned and ignored by regulatory authorities."

* The statement is signed by Colm Begley (Westbank Orphanage, Bethany Home), Helen Fitzpatrick (Westbank Orphanage), John Hill (CofI Magdalen Home, Nursery Rescue Society), Derek Leinster (Bethany Home), Joyce McSharry (Bethany Home), Victor Stevenson (Braemar House, Westbank Orphanage) and Andrew Yates (Bethany Home, Westbank Orphanage)

Tags: Mother and Baby Homes inquiry

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