LONDON (AP) – The Irish Prime Minister on Wednesday apologized formally to the thousands of unmarried women and their children who endured pain, shame and stigma at church institutions, saying his government was determined to repair the country’s injustice .
Prime Minister Micheal Martin’s apology comes a day after the final report of an inquiry said that 9,000 children in 18 mother-and-baby homes – which housed women and girls who became pregnant out of wedlock – in the 20th century died. The investigation was part of a process of reckoning in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Ireland, where ecclesiastical institutions were often linked to a history of abuse.
Martin said Ireland should acknowledge the scandal as part of its national history and “show our deep remorse.” He apologized on behalf of his government for the ‘deep and generational injustice’ visited on mothers and their babies who ended up in the institutions.
“They should not have been there,” he told the Irish parliament. “The state has let you, mothers and children in these homes down.”
Martin said it was deeply disturbing that the authorities at the time knew of the very high mortality rate at the homes but apparently did not intervene. According to the report, 15% of all children in the homes die from diseases and infections such as stomach flu, which is almost double the death rate.
Martin added: “We must learn the lesson that institutionalization creates power structures and abuse of power, and that it may never again be an option for our country.”
Churches run in Ireland for most of the 20th century housed orphans, unmarried pregnant women, and their babies. The mothers were abandoned by their families and hidden from shame, and many of the children were separated from their mothers for adoption.
The institutions were scrutinized after historian Catherine Corless found the death certificates in 2014 for almost 800 children who died in a mother-and-baby home in Western Ireland – but could only find a funeral record for one child .
Investigators later found a mass grave containing the remains of infants and young children in an underground sewer structure on the grounds of the house, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961.
The commission of inquiry said about 56,000 unmarried mothers and about 57,000 children lived in the homes it investigated. Most were admitted in the 1960s and early 1970s.