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Workers began excavating the site of a former church-run home for unmarried woman and their babies in western Ireland on Monday, in a long-awaited effort to recover the remains of around 800 infants and young children who died there.
The excavation at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway, marks another step in Ireland’s reckoning with the legacy of abuse in church-run institutions in what was once an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.
The home was operated by an order of Catholic nuns until its closure in 1961. It was one of many such institutions set up across Ireland where tens of thousands of unmarried, pregnant women were sent and forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
The nuns housed women who became pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes, but most were given up for adoption in a system that saw Church and state collaborate.
In 2014, local historian Catherine Corless uncovered death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the Tuam home between the 1920s and 1961 but found burial records for only one.
Investigators later discovered a mass grave in a disused underground sewage chamber on the site, containing the remains of babies and young children.
DNA testing revealed that the dead children ranged in age from 35 weeks’ gestation to three years old.
“It’s a very, very difficult, harrowing story and situation. We have to wait to see what unfolds now as a result of the excavation,” Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Monday.
A major inquiry into Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes concluded that about 9,000 children died in 18 such institutions. Respiratory infection and gastroenteritis were among the leading causes.
A subsequent probe by the Irish government discovered a mortality rate of about 15% of children born at the so-called mother-and-baby homes. 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through the homes over a 76-year-period, according to the inquiry.
The last of these nationwide institutions did not close until as recently as 1998.
The Bon Secours Sisters, who ran the Tuam home, have issued a “profound apology” and acknowledged their failure to “protect the inherent dignity” of the women and children in their care.
Forensic experts will now work to recover, analyse and preserve the remains. Any identified remains will be returned to relatives in accordance with their wishes. Officials said unidentified remains will be buried with dignity.
The work is expected to take two years to complete. Experts from Colombia, Spain, the UK, Canada and the US will work alongside Irish authorities.
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