TV3 to air insightful documentary into Ireland?s Mother and Baby Scandal.

TV3 GROUP RELEASE

IMMEDIATE: Tuesday 24th June, 2014

 

 

TV3 to air insightful documentary into Ireland’s

Mother and Baby Scandal.

 

·         Told for the first time in one story, TV3’s ‘A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal’ will reveal the true scale of the scandal, which saw tens of thousands of women incarcerated against their will and exceptionally high rates of infant mortality.

 

·         Following the shocking discovery of a mass grave in Tuam containing the bodies of up to 800 babies, TV3 lays bare the shocking story of abuse and neglect and questions if there are more disturbing revelations to come.

 

·         This special TV3 documentary speaks to people who lived in the homes, their relatives, and campaign groups who are fighting for justice along with historians, experts and commentators.

 

Interviews are available on request.

A video link to preview the full programme is available on request.

 

‘A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal’ airs Thursday 26th June at 9pm on TV3.

 

The shocking story of cruelty, abuse and neglect in mother and baby homes is laid bare in a new documentary to be broadcast on TV3 this week. ‘A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal’ reveals how tens of thousands of unmarried mothers were incarcerated in institutions so their families could be spared the shame of babies born out of wedlock.

 

Told for the first time in one story, TV3’s ‘A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal’ hears first-hand accounts from people who lived in the homes and their relatives. One woman describes how her child died and was buried without her knowledge while several others describe their long, heartbreaking search for parents and siblings.

 

Following the shocking discovery of a mass grave in Tuam containing the bodies of up to 800 babies, there is growing evidence that an unusually high number of babies died in the homes and that many were secretly buried in unmarked mass graves. With Tuam appearing to be just the tip of the iceberg, TV3 questions if there are more disturbing revelations to come.

 

The programme also details what amounts to an adoption industry, where healthy babies and infants were sold to couples abroad, particularly the US.

Perhaps most shocking of all is the fact that some babies were used in medical trials. One man, Philip Delaney, describes how he was part of a vaccine trial at Bessborough House in Cork which has never been officially acknowledged.

 

The scandal was not confined to the Catholic Church. The documentary also tells the story of Bethany Home in Dublin, run by the Church of Ireland. Here too, infant mortality rates were high and children were buried in mass graves.

 

Campaigners, historians, experts and commentators including; Historian, Catherine Corless; author of Banished Babies, Mike Milotte; Colm O’Gorman from Amnesty International, Susan Lohan from Adoption Rights Alliance and an expert on social history from UCD, Lindsey Earner Byrne, will assess what it means for our past, present and future, to complete the story of one of this country’s darkest chapters.  

 

‘A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal’ will ask the questions that need to be answered: Why did so many of these children die so young and why were they treated so callously by the very people who were supposed to care for them?

 

A Secret Buried: The Mother and Baby Scandal airs Thursday 26th June at 9pm on TV3.

 

Images have been sent to your picture desk.

 

Select quotes are included in ‘Notes to Editor’

 

Interviews are available on request.

 

A video link to preview the full programme is available on request.

 

ENDS

 

For further information
Ciara Byrne – Press Officer – 01 419 3329/087 319 9732

Jean O’Donovan – Press & Publicity Assistant – 01 419 3428

Sharon McHugh – Head of Press & Publicity – 087 922 4143

publicity@tv3.ie                        
www.tv3.ie

 

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Notes to Editor

 

JP Rodgers, who was born in Tuam Mother and Baby Home in 1947 voices his opinion on the discovery of the graves: “It speaks for itself, 800 graves - couldn’t be any clearer than that. All of those bodies, they all had family. They all had mothers and fathers. Is there any record of them? Do we know who they are? Why were they just thrown in a septic tank? Did they not deserve something better? I mean, you do that to a dog. If your pet dies you go out in the garden, you dig a hole and throw it in there. You don’t mark it. That’s what they done here.”

 

Philip Delaney, describes how he was part of a vaccine trial at Bessborough House in Cork: “There were people coming to the house, who were looking to take blood samples because of a previous trial that had taken place when I was in the home before I was given up for adoption. My adoptive mother said that the doctor who came to take the blood said that there were 20 babies in a trial for a 5 in 1 vaccine and that these babies were not supposed to have be given up for adoption, but they had been, and were now spread out all over the country and she had to go around and try and take the samples to test the results of the vaccine. My natural mother said she doesn’t remember giving consent, she may or she may not have but she would not have known what it was for. She might have thought it was a procedural thing – something that just had to be done. She certainly wasn’t aware that there was this new experiment, this new trial of this new concoction.” 

 

John Barrett, who was born in Bessborough House in 1952 states: “This is our holocaust. A major holocaust. I mean this is something unbelievable.”

 

June Goulding, who took up a position as a Midwife in Bessborough House in Cork in 1951 has been haunted ever since by what she witnessed: “One still born I had and I alerted the nun that there was trouble. The foetal heartbeat had gone and I couldn’t get any foetal heartbeat and I said sister, I said, I think you should ring the doctor, there’s trouble here. And she said ‘she’ll be alright’ and she switched over to the corridor over to the convent and that girl was in labour for about 36 hours and eventually she had a dead born baby boy. A big nine pound baby boy. There was no kindness, there was no empathy, there was no sympathy.”