Wednesday, June 18, 2025 Excavation has begun on a septic tank at a site in Ireland that authorities believe contains the remains of 796 babies and d!ed at a home for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns.
Many of the infant remains are feared to have been dumped in
the septic tank known as “the pit” at the former institution in the small town
of Tuam, County Galway, local historian Catherine Corless told Sky
News.
A total of 798 children died at the home between 1925 and
its closure in 1961, of which just two were buried in a nearby cemetery, as
Corless’ research found.
The other 796 children’s remains are believed to be under
the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, which was demolished in 1971
and is now surrounded by a modern apartment complex.
Bon Secours, known locally as The Home, was a maternity home
for unmarried mothers and their children, run by a religious order of Catholic
nuns.
Unmarried pregnant women would be sent to the home to give
birth and would be interned for a year to do unpaid work.
They were separated from their newborn children, who would
be raised by the nuns until they were adopted, often without the consent of
their families.
The full scale of the tragedy at Bon Secours was only
uncovered in 2014 thanks to Corless’s findings.
Now, many years later, a team of investigators began their
forensic investigation this week.
It is expected to take up to two years to identify the
remains of the infants and give them a dignified reburial and offer some degree
of closure to survivors.
“I don’t care if it’s a thimbleful, as they tell me there wouldn’t be much remains left; at six months old, it’s mainly cartilage more than bone,” Annette McKay, whose sister is believed to be one of the 798 victims, told Sky News.
Her mother, Margaret “Maggie” O’Connor gave birth to a baby,
Mary Margaret, at the home after she was r@ped at the age of 17.
The girl di£d six months later, and her mother only found
out when a nun told her.
“She was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her
and said ‘the child of your sin is dead,'” said Annette, who now lives in the
UK.
Bon Secours was just one institution that made up a network
of oppression in Ireland, the true extent of which has only been revealed in
recent years.
Mothers at Bon Secours who “reoffended” by having more
children out of wedlock would be sent to Magdalene laundries, the infamous
Irish institutions for so-called “fallen women,” usually run by Catholic orders
but quietly supported by the state.
Originally, the term “fallen women” was applied mostly to
sex workers, but the Magdalene laundries later started taking in “seduced”
women, victims of r@pe and incest, and female orphans or children abandoned or
abused by their families.
The last of the Magdalene laundries only closed their doors
in the 1990s.
Ireland’s government issued a formal state apology in 2014
and, in 2022, a compensation scheme was set up which has so far paid out the
equivalent of $32.7 million to 814 survivors.
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