They were called Kathleen, Mary or Joseph: in Ireland, the first exhumations of the 796 children buried without burial between 1925 and 1960 in a religious home officially started this Monday. Irish experts had completed the perimeter of the old septic tank of the St Mary home in the good rescue in Tuam in the west of the country in mid-June in the west of the country.
Objective of excavation: to find, to analyze, identify if possible and to bury the remains of children with dignity, including many newborns. These operations, carried out with the assistance of experts from Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, must last two years. DNA samples have been collected from around thirty relatives, a process that must be extended in the coming months in order to bring together as much genetic evidence as possible.
A quest for more than 10 years
This quest, which aims to get these 796 children out of oblivion, began in 2014. At that time, Catherine Corless, a local historian, revealed detailed evidence attesting to their death in this home. His research, which causes a shock wave in the country and has a global impact, lead to a macabre discovery: a common pit. “There was no burial register, no cemetery, no statue, no cross, absolutely nothing,” said the historian, describing her decades of work as “hard fight”. “No one wanted to listen to,” she said. “I begged:” Take these babies out of these sewers, offer them the worthy Christian burial that they refused to them! “In vain.
Things move in 2021. A national commission of inquiry into mistreatment imposed in these homes underlines “alarming” infant mortality levels in these institutions, where 9,000 children died. She also established that 56,000 single women and 57,000 children went through 18 homes of this type between 1922 and 1998.
“It was denied these children for the slightest human right”
At the time, pregnant women outside marriage were locked in these homes under the leadership of the Irish state and the powerful Catholic church, which often managed them together. They gave birth there before being separated from their children, often given to adoption. “It was denied these children to the slightest human right during their lives, as well as their mothers, and they were deprived of dignity and respect in death,” said Anna Corrigan, two members of the siblings may be buried in Tuam.
The institution of the good help sisters was shaved in 1972 and gave way to a subdivision. The septic pit remained intact. It was not until 2022 that a law officially authorized the excavations. And in 2023, a team was finally appointed to conduct operations in Tuam. The slowness of the process has been denounced several times by relatives of the victims. Despite everything, at 71 years old, Catherine Corless is delighted with this new advance, which she would have, by her own admission, “never thought to arrive”.