the head of the catholic church in
ireland has apologized unreservedly to
tens of thousands of women and children
the survivors of homes for
unmarried mothers and babies often run
by the church
after an inquiry revealed around 9 000
children
died over the decades at one institution
in county galway
almost 800 died and it's thought many of
them were buried in a sewage system
our island correspondent chris page
begins his report with a man who was
born
in the home the only thing that i can
remember is the beds being wet
to march down to school you had to go 10
minutes late in the morning
you had to leave 10 minutes early in the
evening
we were all cornered off in the section
of the playground by the nuns so you
wouldn't mix with the other kids
and then to be locked up what i call a
prison really and to think like why
just because i was born out of wedlock
pj
hoverty spent his first seven years in
the home which once stood here
ireland in the 1950s was a deeply
conservative catholic society
unmarried women who were pregnant were
taken into religious institutions
and separated from their children the
fathers got away with it
it was always the woman that was to
blame it was always the woman's fault
and i suppose then when you look at
other people i was lucky i got to beat
my mother
if i didn't meet her i would be blaming
her for living in there
there's another reason why pj thinks
he's lucky
at the tomb home nearly 800 children
aged up to three
died between 1925 and 1961.
investigators believe many were buried
at the site
in some kind of sewage system when i go
down there
and stand there to think that i could be
in there too that religious country that
we are supposed to be that would do the
likes of that to a helpless little baby
the irish government has committed to
having this site excavated
so the children whose remains are
beneath this ground can be reburied with
some dignity
chum is the mother and baby home which
has generated the most international
attention
but there are many other institutions in
the republic of ireland with long
histories
of shame neglect and unspeakable cruelty
the inquiry report says around 9 000
children died in the 18 homes which were
investigated
that's about one in seven of those who
were born in the institutions
investigators state it represents an
appalling level of infant mortality
the irish government has said there were
decades of brutality
the regime described in the report
wasn't imposed on us
by any foreign power we did this to
ourselves
as a society we treated women
exceptionally badly we treated children
exceptionally badly but pj thinks the
report hasn't got to the full truth
there was nothing there today that would
say god does fantastic now my mother is
being recognized or
apologizing to my mother and they didn't
do that today
tonight the leader of the catholic
church in ireland archbishop emman
martin
has apologized for the long-lasting
emotional distress
which survivors have suffered in this
country
history will still hurt for years to
come
chris page bbc news tune