Catholic order covered up for Irish priest who molested 100 girls

(RNS) A religious order covered up the sexual crimes of an Irish priest who abused more than 100 children, some as young as 6, according to a new report.

The failures of the Salvatorian order to act on the crimes of a priest named “Father A” were outlined in a report released Wednesday (May 4) by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

http://religionnews.com/2016/05/05/catholic-order-covered-up-for-irish-priest-who-molested-more-than-100-girls/ 

HBE Publishing Releases “The Swan Garden”

CLOVIS, CALIF., February 19, 2016—HBE Publishing is proud to announce the release of “The Swan Garden” written by Anne Biggs. The book was published under the company’s imprint publisher, Paradigm Hall Press, and explores the terrible conditions of unwed pregnant women in Ireland during the 1950s and 60s.
“The Swan Garden” tells the story of a young woman who survives a brutal rape and gives birth in a mother baby home in Ireland, after which she endures horrific abuse in a Magdalene Laundry. While she does eventually escape, she never forgets the baby that was taken from her and gradually learns the truths that were kept from her all those years ago.

http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/hbe-publishing-releases-the-swan-garden/411319/ 

‘The roots of Ireland’s goodness are drawn from a deep Christian faith’

Delia Maguire tells Francis Phillips that, after the abuse crisis, the Church in Ireland will never be the same again

On Monday I blogged about an unusual new novel – unusual because, while not painting a sentimentalised picture of life in a small Irish country parish, it succeeds in breathing life, warmth and credibility into the personality of the main character: Fr Barnabas Salmon. As always with books that make one reflect, it posed questions in my mind so I was glad to make contact with Delia Maguire, author of the novel.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/01/22/the-roots-of-irelands-goodness-are-drawn-from-a-deep-christian-faith/ 

How Sex Abuse By Irish Priests Helped Cripple The Catholic Church

An Irish Tragedy: How Sex Abuse By Irish Priests Helped Cripple The Catholic Church. The story of how Irish immigrants helped to build the American Catholic Church is well-known. 

But the sad tale of how Irish priests later undermined the Church has gone untold, until now. Investigative reporter Joe Rigert's search for the roots of the Catholic sex-abuse scandals led him to Ireland, where he found that rigid sexual repression in both society and the priest.

http://books.cheapstorebuy.co/3984044-an-irish-tragedy.html 

Long-lost brothers celebrate their first Christmas together after 80 years apart

Two brothers who spent 80 years unaware of each other's existence are celebrating their first Christmas together. Frederick O'Donnell (78) and his brother Jimmy (80) were born in separate mother and baby homes in Dublin in the 1930s.

They met each other for the first time this year. They were united thanks to a Herald story about how Frederick had discovered he had a brother and was now seeking help to track him down. The Finders International company responded, and located Jimmy, who was living in Cheltenham in England.

http://www.herald.ie/news/longlost-brothers-celebrate-their-first-christmas-together-after-80-years-apart-34302409.html 

HSE knew of ‘quasi illegal’ Bessborough adoptions in 2011

A senior HSE social worker revealed in 2011 that Bessborough Mother and Baby Home files contained information on the “quasi-illegal deportation and adoption” of children to the USA, Britain, and Australia.
The revelation is contained in a business plan prepared by principal social worker in the South Lee region, Pat O’Dwyer, in 2011 in preparation for the HSE’s takeover of about 15,500 adoption files from the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Order which ran the Bessborough, Sean Ross Abbey, and Castlepollard Mother and Baby Homes.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/hse-knew-of-quasi-illegal-bessborough-adoptions-in-2011-371680.html 

Philomena author reveals abuse of Irish children ‘sold’ to America

Irish children born out of wedlock in the 1950s and 60s were often sold to American couples by the Catholic Church, according to a television documentary by the author of the Philomena story.
In the BBC programme, Martin Sixsmith says that the system was a ‘lottery’ for the children as the Church did little to ensure the adoptive parents would be suitable. Sixsmith is the author of the book Philomena, which was made into an Oscar nominated film starring Dame Judy Dench and Steve Coogan.

http://ireland-calling.com/blog/philomena-author-reveals-abuse-suffered-irish-children-sold-to-america/ 

State feared public scandal over infant deaths at mother and baby homes

The State feared a “public scandal” in relation to the alarming number of children dying in mother and baby homes — 70 years before the Tuam babies scandal made worldwide headlines.  The revelation is contained in a letter sent on behalf of parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health Dr Con Ward in 1945 to the Bishop of Cork Daniel Cohalan.
The letter was in response to an angry letter sent to Dr Ward by Bishop Cohalan where he questioned the department’s request that the order remove the head of Bessborough over the “trouble” of infant mortality at the institution. Records show there was an 82% infant death rate at Bessborough at the time.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/state-feared-public-scandal-over-infant-deaths-at-mother-and-baby-homes-366523.html 

Nuns told don’t co-operate as Bishop tried to thwart probes into Bessborough scandal

MONTH after month, year after year we peel away another layer of the sordid history of Ireland’s mother and baby homes. In a country where falling pregnant outside marriage was viewed as something worse than a crime, thousands of women and girls were instead hidden away and their children taken from them.
With no real solution to the ‘problem’ of ‘illegitimacy’, the State was happy to leave it to religious orders and a system of mother and baby homes where, even by the standards of the day, the physical and psychological treatment of women and the removal of their children bordered on criminal.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/special-report-nuns-told-dont-co-operate-as-bishop-tried-to-thwart-probes-into-bessborough-scandal-366416.html 

Ireland's Lost Babies

The movie Philomena told the story of Philomena Lee, who was forced by the Catholic Church to give up her son for adoption. It showed her journey with journalist Martin Sixsmith to find her child 50 years later.
The movie won public and critical praise, but it also shone a light on a shocking period of Irish history - a time when the Church wielded enormous political and cultural power, attempting to control even what happened in the bedrooms of Ireland.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/11/10/4123123.htm 

Intellectually disabled laundry survivors to be compensated

About 40 women with intellectual disabilities will be paid compensation for their time in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, following the passage of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Bill.

Around €18 million has so far been paid in compensation to 500 women who have received sums of up to €100,000 each, but it has not been possible to compensate those incapable of applying for the scheme.  The new bill will enable women who worked in the laundries to appoint people – or have a court appoint someone – to apply for compensation on their behalf.

http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/intellectually-disabled-laundry-survivors-be-compensated 

Scrutinise Protestant mother and baby homes’

Church of Ireland Bishop Paul Colton was so moved by the experience of a survivor of the Westbank orphanage that he has called for all Protestant homes to be included in the Mother and Baby Home investigation.
In a letter to the head of the Mother and Baby Home Commission, Judge Yvonne Murphy, Dr Colton said he had been contacted by Victor Stevenson with an enquiry about Cork Mother and Baby Home, Braemar House.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/scrutinise-protestant-mother-and-baby-homes-358955.html 

Man reunited with Irish family nuns claimed were dead

I remember sitting around the old radio... at Nazareth House Christchurch New Zealand... we use to ask Sister Blandina about our families... that is the girls who never saw... their mothers or fathers... all that she would tell us... was that our mother were dead... and that no one wanted us... I found my family in 1993... I tried to look for my mother in 1970s... they never came back to me... I was left just hanging on... that one day I would see her... they had gone to her house... as my little sister Wendy had told me... that she was a little girl... and they asked for my mum... she was out on the farm... and they never went to see her... it hurts so much... that I never meet her... or held her close to me... Ann

=========================

Paddy Monaghan was sent from a children's home in Northern Ireland to Australia in the 1940s. As a boy, he was told all his relatives were dead. Now, after more than 40 years of searching, he has found them - alive and well in County Fermanagh.

Paddy Monaghan's face breaks into a wide grin when I ask how it feels to have found his family after more than 40 years of searching.  "It feels great. I've always longed to be able to have somebody with my blood in them. I didn't think it was ever going to happen," he said.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-34528241

Mari Tatlow-Steed speaks of childhood in Sacred Heart mother and baby home

Mari Tatlow-Steed lives in Philadelphia, but was born at the Bessborough home run by Sacred Heart sisters in County Cork. She said there were two categories of children in the home. "Children that were earmarked to go over to the United States for adoption or even remain in Ireland, we were fattened up, we were given the better food," she said.
'Neglect' "And I have no doubt there were probably children who might have had difficulties when they were born, congenital problems, weaknesses whatever it may be, that the nuns just decided, 'well we know this one is not going to be earmarked for adoption', so they're not going to get the same level of decent care."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27728307 

Irish minister considers Bethany Home inquiry call

Irish justice minister Alan Shatter is considering calls for an investigation of the former Protestant-run Bethany Home in Dublin. Up to 219 children born at the mother and baby home between 1922 and 1949 died. In 2010, 40 infants from the home were discovered in unmarked graves in the nearby Mount Jerome cemetery.
Former residents have accused the government of religious discrimination. They are angry that they have been excluded from an investigation into allegations of abuse at the Catholic-run Magdalen mother and baby laundries.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-16866956

The Catholic church sold my child

It began with a chance encounter at a New Year's party in 2004. I was trying to leave, but a woman said she had a message for me. She knew I had been a journalist and she had a friend who wanted my help to solve a family mystery. I agreed to a meeting, and found myself embarking on a five-year quest for a man I had never met.
The woman's friend was called Jane, a financial administrator from St Albans. She was in her late 30s and had been through an emotional experience. Just before Christmas, her mother, Philomena, tipsy on festive sherry, had revealed a secret she had kept for 50 years – she had a son she had never mentioned to anyone.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/19/catholic-church-sold-child 

How two Irish sisters beat a Kafkaesque system

When she was 12, Ena Ronayne made a call from a public telephone box to the Cork maternity hospital where she thought she had been born. It was the wrong place.
About an hour's drive away, in the town of Clonmel, her younger sister, Edel, was peppering her adopted mother with questions about her biological family. Neither knew the other existed. It would be 35 years before they met.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/27/us-ireland-adoption-system-idUSBREA1Q1HY20140227?mod=related&channelName=worldNews 

After 1950s forced adoption New Yorker is reunited with his Irish mother

Christopher Quirin, 63, was born to a single mother in Ireland in 1950, a time when such a thing was considered an unspeakable disgrace. Back then Quirin’s mother was sent by her parents to the now notorious Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, the same mothers and babies home as Philomena Lee. Lee is the woman whose shocking life-story inspired the recent Academy Award-nominated movie starring Judi Dench.
Lee and Quirin’s mother had children just two years apart, and Quirin says he imagines he must have played in the same rooms as Michael, Lee’s boy who was later adopted by the American couple Doc and Marge Hess.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/After-1950s-forced-adoption-New-Yorker-is-reunited-with-his-Irish-mother.html 

Bishop John Buckley: Magdalene mass grave ‘must be accessible’ to public

The Bishop of Cork and Ross has backed the calls of campaigners to make the vandalised mass grave of Magdalene women at Sunday’s Well accessible to the public.. Bishop John Buckley’s support comes following his call for the exhumation of the remains of Little Nellie — the “unofficial patron saint” of Cork — so people can pray at her grave.
Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) and a number of Magdalene survivors had expressed concern that there was no mention of the mass grave on the site of the former Magdalene Laundry when making his call.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/bishop-john-buckley-magdalene-mass-grave-must-be-accessible-to-public-349612.html 

Research suggests five women buried at Tuam Mother and Baby home

New research suggests five women may have been buried in an unmarked mass grave, along with hundreds of children at the Tuam Mother and Baby home in County Galway.
Historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered evidence that nearly 800 children were buried on the grounds of the home, now believes that the five women are buried with them. A report in today's Irish Mail on Sunday says nine unmarried mothers died during their time at the home, but the historian has only been able to find burial certificates for four of them.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/research-suggests-five-women-buried-at-tuam-mother-and-baby-home-692314.html