A LIMERICK woman, leading a campaign to have ground excavated at the former mother and baby home at Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, County Tipperary, is to erect a poster at the site with photos of more than 1,000 children’s faces, one for each child who died there.
Ann Connolly will also erect a nine-foot poster remembering the women “who went in pregnant and died there”.
The designs were made using the official register of deaths, showing 1,090 baby deaths at Sean Ross Abbey while in the care of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
“Seeing the records of how those children died was shocking beyond words,” Ann told the Limerick Post.
The photos are generic but, Ann says, she wants to bring home the reality of those little lost lives.
“From those registers, I picked just five children to show the reality behind the numbers,” she explains.
“Baby Mary, 14 weeks old, died of green diarrhoea and exhaustion. Baby Eleanor, 8 months old, died of marasmus (severe malnutrition and starvation), a cause of death that appears again and again in the records.
“Baby John, just short of 11 months, died of sunstroke. Some might call that a tragic accident but only a year later, baby Vincent, 14 months old, died the very same way, left outside and forgotten.
“Baby Catherine, 9 months old, died due to complications from an immunisation.
“Baby Eugene, 5 months old, died of acute heart failure caused by aspiration of food “probably porridge” into his lungs.”
Ann says that “these are only five of the 1,090 babies. Every one of those deaths has a name, an age, and a so-called cause beside it. To look down that list is absolutely shocking.”
Ann believes that many of the deaths “were not just tragic, they were preventable. A huge number of the causes listed were gastro related illnesses, chest infections, and pneumonia, the kinds of conditions that thrive in cold, damp, and filthy environments.”
“It is important to remember that all of these deaths were certified and signed off by officials. The Department of Health carried out inspections in Sean Ross Abbey, as recorded in the Commission’s own report. How could they not have seen what was happening?
Ann says it is accepted that vaccine trials were carried out on children in the mother and baby homes, including Sean Ross Abbey.
“I have asked, again and again, under the Freedom of Information Act, who gave permission for pharmaceutical companies to use these children? Every time I have been shut down by government departments, by medical authorities, and by the pharmaceutical company itself,” she stated.
“It was not the mothers. Their consent was never asked. Their children were used like test subjects, without their knowledge, without their permission, and without their protection.”
While some inspection reports gave the Abbey a clean bill of health, even describing the mothers as “happy and contented”, Ann says survivor accounts “paint a very different picture”.
“Women remembered constant hunger, sparse food, and gruelling work such as handwashing and ironing clothes and bedding,” she said.
“Adoptions were arranged without consent, and many mothers were deceived into believing they were going somewhere else when in fact they were being separated from their child forever.”
Ann also wants the 23 young women who died there to be remembered.
“Despite everything, we know the death registers, survivor testimonies, and the Commission’s report, the truth remains painfully incomplete: 821 children from Sean Ross Abbey are still missing,” she claimed.
“The government has the legal power but has refused to excavate the grounds where anomalies were detected. The Church remains silent, and mothers still search for the children they never buried.”
In response to a query from the Limerick Post, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children, Disability, and Equality said that “the Department and Minister Foley are committed to ongoing, open engagement with survivors and their representatives”.
She added that “Minister Foley is due to meet a local group about their concerns about the burial site associated with the former mother and baby institution in Sean Ross Abbey”.
She said that “a forensic archaeological investigation was conducted at the children’s burial ground at Sean Ross Abbey” and that the commission of inquiry at the time “was satisfied that the forensic report provided clear evidence that the coffined remains of children under the age of one are buried in the designated burial ground and that it did not consider that further investigation was warranted”.
The spokeswoman concluded that “there is no evidence of manifestly inappropriate burials, and there is also no evidence of manifestly inappropriate burials in the area outside the designated burial ground”.
