Block Sisters of Charity as 'sole owners' of National Maternity Hospital

Sign and share this petition to prevent the Sisters of Charity becoming 'sole owners' of the hospital. Show the state we will not allow the abuse of our babies, children, and women to be swept under the rug. Demand a formal apology from Sisters of Charity and demand they pay their share of the redress scheme.

https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/block-sisters-of-chairty-as-sole-owners-of-national-maternity-hospital?bucket&source=facebook-share-button&time=1492539365 

Priest defends Tuam nuns, says unmarried mothers sterilized in other countries

A prominent Catholic priest in Ireland has defended how the church handled the issue of unmarried mothers in institutions like Tuam in Galway, where 800 children have no burial records.

Father Padraig McCarthy was writing in the influential Catholic publication “The Furrow.”
He stated other countries used sterilization which was mandatory in some. He stated women were sent to asylums in many countries for being “feeble minded” and “promiscuous.”

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/priest-defends-tuam-nuns-says-unmarried-mothers-sterilized-in-other-countries# 

Irish woman discovers long-lost brother after they both do online DNA test

An Irish woman says her "head can't stop spinning" after a chance DNA test led to her brother that she never knew existed getting in touch

After Cathy Hanley Drury's friend asked her to do a test with Ancestery.com last year, the last thing she expected was for her long-lost brother Jim Smith to contact her. It emerged that Cathy and Jim's late mother Mary Jo Hanley (née Higgins) gave birth to her son in a mother and baby home in London in 1948, before she later returned to Ireland.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/irish-woman-discovers-longlost-brother-after-they-both-do-online-dna-test-35572544.html 

Commissioner for Human Rights criticises Irish Government response to Magdalene survivors

The Irish state has come under criticism for its response to survivors of Magdalene Laundries and other historical abuses.
A report released today from the Council of Europe calls on the Irish Government to widen the terms of reference into the inquiry into Mother and Baby homes.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/commissioner-for-human-rights-criticises-irish-government-response-to-magdalene-survivors-783588.html

Irish church pins hopes on 2018 meeting of families

Ireland's clergy sex abuse scandal has severely damaged the Catholic Church's reputation in the once-devout nation. Irish church officials hope that a meeting of Catholic families that is expected to bring Pope Francis to Ireland next year will help families regain trust in the church after the clerical sex abuse scandal.
Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said Thursday that young people in particular “have been very scandalized” about the decades of abuse and cover-up that have eroded the credibility of the church in Ireland.

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/03/31/irish-church-pins-hopes-on-2018-meeting-of-families/

Conversion of city Magdalene Laundry to women’s refuge delayed amid mother and baby homes controversy

Galway Bay fm newsroom – The conversion of the old Magdalene Laundry at Forster Street in the city has been delayed until the outcome of the future of an investigation into mother and baby homes is determined.
Domestic Violence Outreach Worker with COPE Galway Waterside House, Jackie Carroll has given a presentation on the service to members of the City Joint Policing Committee. It was revealed at the JPC meeting that breaches of barring, safety and protection orders have almost doubled in the Galway city garda district.

http://connachttribune.ie/conversion-of-city-magdalene-laundry-to-womens-refuge-delayed-amid-mother-and-baby-homes-controversy/ 

Breaking the rule of Silence

John Kennedy has a long connection with the Good Shepherds in Limerick. His family were, for many generations, involved with the Good Shepherd Order. He visited his aunts who were Sisters in the Order in Limerick many times as a child and in adulthood John managed the Good Shepherd Laundry from the mid 1970s. He eventually took over the business as a private enterprise in the 1980s. He has an immense knowledge of the Laundry, the women who were there and the nuns. Here John shares stories of the women, gives a detailed account of how the Laundry operated and shares a unique insight into the Good Shepherd Institution and how it functioned.

http://www.magdalenelaundrylimerick.com/johnk.html 

We are ashamed of our government, say abuse survivors who have been waiting 17 months for compensation

Historical abuse survivors have accused Northern Ireland's politicians of putting their own needs before victims as they continue to wait for financial payments promised 17 months ago.
Victims have warned that many have been left feeling suicidal or facing financial ruin as the current Stormont impasse means that the findings and recommendations of a four-year inquiry into state and church abuse have still not been presented to the Assembly.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/we-are-ashamed-of-our-government-say-abuse-survivors-who-have-been-waiting-17-months-for-compensation-35615606.html 

Mother and Baby Homes report misses the mark

WE WAITED seven months for the Government to publish the second interim report of the Commission to Inquire into Mother and Baby Homes. It did not make for encouraging reading.  Running to 16 pages, the report has three main sections — on redress, its terms of reference, and on the issue of the false registration of births.
However, on the issue of the real elephant in the room — illegal adoptions — it was remarkably, and worryingly, lukewarm. In fact, the section is not even titled “illegal adoptions”. It is given the more euphemistic title — one favoured by government departments — “false registration of birth”.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/mother-and-baby-homes-report-misses-the-mark-447654.html 

Immoral and repulsive': Fury at Zappone's refusal for redress for mother and baby home survivors

THE COALITION OF Mother and Baby Home Survivors (CMABS) has said that it “utterly rejects” Minister Katherine Zappone’s refusal to offer redress to survivors of these homes.
Measures of redress were recommended in the second interim report by the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes, published yesterday.

http://www.thejournal.ie/zappone-redress-mothers-3336738-Apr2017/

Govt rejects immediate redress for mother and baby home children

The Government should re-examine the exclusion of children who lived without their mothers in the country's mother and baby homes and county homes from the 2002 Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes has suggested.
As an alternative, it has suggested that Cabinet look again at establishing a similar redress scheme for the homes' former residents.

http://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2017/0411/866974-mother-and-baby-homes-report/ 

"The nuns forcibly separated us" recalls former Tuam baby snatched from his mother

When John Rodgers’ mother was two and a half years old she was charged with begging on the streets of Dublin and sent by a chief justice to an industrial school. Released at age 16, she was raped and later gave birth to her son John, for which she was sent to the notorious mother and baby home in Tuam. Rodgers tells Cahir O'Doherty about their shattering experiences and the shadows they cast over two long separated lives.

When John Rodgers’ mother Bridie was two and a half years old she was arrested for begging on the streets of Dublin. A judge decided the best thing to do to reform her character was send her to a remote industrial school, where it was stipulated she would remain until her 16th birthday.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/no-country-for-mothers-and-babies-reality-for-a-son-born-in-tuam# 

After 44 years "I am still seeking my mother" says Mother and Baby home survivor

Ronan James O’Halloran was born on December 9, 1973 at St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on Dublin’s Navan Road. Now aged 43, he has spent the past two and a half decades searching for the woman forced to give him up at birth.

“From a very young age I knew I was adopted,” he told IrishCentral, but it was only when he was 18 that he was allowed to begin the search for his birth family. With his legal majority freshly acquired he contacted the Catholic adoption agency, Cúnamh, but his efforts were bluntly rebuked

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/dublin-mother-and-baby-home-survivor-s-struggle-to-find-his-birth-mom# 

'A tsunami of survivors': Law firms swamped by historical child abuse victims

Australian legal firms are experiencing unprecedented demand from people who have suffered alleged child sexual abuse in institutions such as churches, schools and youth groups.
The demand has been spurred on by revelations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and legal reforms which allow survivors to make a claim for damages regardless of when the abuse allegedly occurred.

http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/4570843/a-tsunami-of-survivors-law-firms-swamped-by-historical-child-abuse-victims/?cs=7 

Ireland less severe on unmarried mothers, says priest

The treatment of unmarried mothers between the 1920s and 1960s was “less severe” in Ireland than in other countries, partly due to the strength of Catholic teaching, a priest has claimed.
In an article in The Furrow, a Catholic journal, Father Pádraig McCarthy, a retired parish priest from Sandyford, says other European countries had far more “draconian ways” of dealing with women who were sent to institutions for being supposedly “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ireland-less-severe-on-unmarried-mothers-says-priest-l3rmc0xz3 

Government was forced to set up redress scheme, say Oblates

The €1.5 billion redress scheme for those abused in Catholic institutions was forced on the Government of the day by victims groups and their legal representatives, a statement by one of the 18 religious congregations investigated by the Ryan Commission has said.

It also said findings in the Ryan Commission report were “not immune to challenge” and were “opinions come to by the Commission on a basis that would not be sufficient in a court of law”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/government-was-forced-to-set-up-redress-scheme-say-oblates-1.3035240 

No one cried stop to Ireland’s Catholic institutions

I recall clearly a shocking conversation that I had about 20 years ago, with a fine man from Tralee, Co. Kerry about the Christian Brothers Industrial School in that town. He recalled that some of the boys confined in the industrial school attended classes with him in The Green, the brothers' local high school. He remembered that when the final bell rang to end the school day they would bolt for their living quarters because if they tarried at all they claimed they would be beaten.
My other memory of that conversation is much more disturbing. He told me that local people would sometimes hear screams at night from the school.  As a teenager, he was surprised by this and asked his father, who worked as a laborer in the town, what was going on to cause such nocturnal cries.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/no-one-cried-stop-to-ireland-s-catholic-institutions#.WOQmxgcU6wU.facebook 

Nearly 300 abuse allegations made against Nazareth Sisters

A total of 294 physical and emotional abuse allegations were made against 61 Nazareth Sisters, 40 now deceased. None was convicted in the courts. Just 115 were reported to police and health authorities. Eight of the accused sisters remain in ministry, 13 accused are retired and one has left the congregation.

The Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children was “unable to assess the extent to which the Sisters of Nazareth have dealt with the allegations and concerns that have arisen, due to the unavailability of any contemporaneous case file records”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/nearly-300-abuse-allegations-made-against-nazareth-sisters-1.3037766 

Call for genocide prosecution over mothers’ homes

A group of mothers formerly resident in mother and baby homes has written to Máire Whelan, the attorney-general, asking her to prosecute the state for genocide on the basis that their children were adopted without valid consent.
They have also asked the International Criminal Court to informally assist Whelan with such a prosecution.

http://irishfirstmothers.com/press/Call-For-Genocide-Prosecution-Over-Mothers-Homes%20_Sunday-Times.html 

Historical abuse survivors continue to wait for compensation in Northern Ireland

Historical abuse survivors have accused Northern Ireland's politicians of putting their own needs before victims as they continue to wait for financial payments promised 17 months ago.

Victims have warned that many have been left suicidal or facing financial ruin as the current Stormont impasse means that the findings and recommendations of a four-year inquiry into state and church abuse have still not been presented to the assembly.

https://www.sundayworld.com/news/northern-ireland/historical-abuse-survivors-continue-to-wait-for-compensation-in-northern-ireland