Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Retraumatisation is a conscious or unconscious reminder of past trauma that results in a re-experiencing of the initial trauma event. It can be triggered by a situation, an attitude or expression, or by certain environments that replicate the dynamics and the loss of power, control and safety of the original trauma. Not being believed or listened to is another factor in trauma and retrauma. The whole issue of the experiences of people who were incarcerated, locked away and hidden behind the walls of the so-called mother and baby homes is only one part of a legacy of incarceration that is an open wound in this country. It is a wound that we continue to leave untreated because the State has consciously avoided it and is now conducting a tactic of delay until they die.

The most recent delay has caused a great deal of distress for those survivors and their families who are still waiting for acknowledgment, for an apology and for redress. To be clear, redress is not just about financial compensation. It is also about acknowledging what happened, accepting responsibility and someone being held accountable. Until we do that, the State continues to drag people through more traumas and cruelty every day. We saw the awful way in which a small group of Magdalen survivors were wrongfully excluded from the redress scheme and the Government was heavily criticised by the Ombudsman for that exclusion. It was unjustifiable and, in a similar way, the exclusion of a tiny group of survivors from the Protestant Bethany Home should also be heavily criticised. The latest delay by the commission has a consequence of continuing that exclusion for that small group of people. There is no legitimate reason for them to have been left out in the first place and it is absolutely shameful that the Government is not intervening now. There is ample evidence of cruelty and neglect of children and babies at the Bethany Home. There is also evidence of the State's involvement in placing children in this home, of funding this home and of concerns flagged about the conditions there.

In 1939, the clerk of the Rathdown Board of Assistance wrote to the secretary of local government, raising concerns about a child in poor health and rickety condition, and specifically asked that provision is made for inspection of the Bethany Home. In 1940, a request directly to the medical inspector of local government asked that the matter be inquired into as several children have been sent to the nurse in the district from time to time from this home suffering from rickets. Between 1922 and 1949, 223 children from the Bethany Home were buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery in unmarked graves. Some 175 were between four weeks and two years old, 25 were aged from a few hours to four weeks old, and 19 were stillborn. The causes of death recorded tell a story of neglect, with 54 from convulsions, 26 from malnutrition, 12 from delicacy, seven from pneumonia, and 19 with no cause given. That the State played a role in the use of the Bethany Home structure is undeniable. Correspondence in 1946 from the secretary of Monaghan County Council states:

I am directed by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health to refer to the County Manager’s Order (no. 4711) and to state that he will not object to payment being made at the rate of 15 shillings per week in respect of patients maintained in Bethany home Rathgar.

Last week, a survivor, Joyce McSharry, got in touch with us. She sent her story. She also sent it to the Minister in the hope that it would be read and viewed with some empathy as it deserves to be. The response from the Minister's office was, sadly, a typical bureaucratic reply that did not acknowledge the story that Joyce went to great lengths to write and explain that it had actually been read. I have no doubt that it was a very difficult and traumatic thing for Joyce to have to put down in writing.

I do not have time to read it all but here is a selection from her letter:

My birth mother Emily Sheppey was born in Islington in London in 1928 she was a member of the Church of England. She gave birth to me in 1951 in the Protestant Bethany home in Dublin where I remained with my mother until the following December, at which time I underwent a peculiar irregular adoption. Over the last thirteen years I pieced together my roots with some success. I have two life stories, one told to me and one I discovered. I am unable to obtain a long version of my birth certificate, as the state has only an irregular version of my details. My adoptive parents informed me that my mother died in 1951. They said that a social worker visited a flat in which a woman was found dead in her bed from TB. I was reportedly discovered in the bed beside her. I was brought to St Ultan's hospital and then to the Bethany Home. These details were elaborated upon as I grew. The story is a lie. I was shocked to discover in 2013 that my Parents always knew it to be a lie. My mother Emily did die in a flat, but aged 48, lonely and alone, apart from her pet dog, a poodle, in Weston Super Mare, UK, in August 1976. My second Presbyterian baptism was designed to erase the fact that my mother, Emily Sheppy, resided in the Bethany Home and was not dead. In 2013 and 2014 I obtained adoption documents from PACT (formerly the Protestant Adoption Society) One of them was an 'agreement' from 1951. Its content is deeply upsetting. It indicates that my mother was probably pressured into giving me up. My adoptive parents participated in this charade and were therefore aware that my mother was alive. I may have been told the ‘death-of-TB-in-a flat’ story in an effort to prevent me from searching for my mother, and the document may have been designed to frighten my mother into not seeking me out. Besides stipulating that I was to be brought up Protestant, the penniless Emily was threatened in the 'agreement' that should she attempt to contact her daughter, she would be liable retrospectively for £26 minimum per annum (valued at €913.25 in 2013), plus educational, medical, clothing and other costs. An owner of the solicitor firm who drew up the documents was appointed as my mother’s 'attorney', but not to represent Emily's interests. It was designed so as to avoid contacting Emily under anticipated Adoption Act legislation. This was explicitly stated. This man (Ralph Walker) was a nephew of Bethany Home Residential Secretary, Hettie Walker, who also signed the 'agreement' ..... Thirteen years ago, In January 2002, I began attempting to trace my roots by contacting PACT (Protestant Adoption and Counselling Trust), which holds Bethany Home records. For a €100 fee, they first gave me a copy of a single line in a register and, in May 2003, my first cousin Pam's UK telephone number. I therefore rang Pam cold. She was astonished to hear this strange lrishwoman, about whom she had recently learned. What astonished me was that Pam knew my mother, who was alive for the first 25 years of my life. I did not know in 2002 that my (by now deceased) adoptive parents also knew. Finding out in this way made me start to question all I thought I knew. I was emotionally drained and extremely upset. In fact I became very ill ..... I contacted Pam again in 2013. We spent months talking on the phone getting to know each other. It was decided I would go over to London to meet her and the family. I had also contacted my mother’s other brother, Fran, who lived in Shrewsbury. I told him I was coming over and would like to meet him ..... Uncle Fran was always aware of my existence. Fran gave me a very special and to this day treasured gift from my mother, 12 photographs of me from my Christening to six months old. It was the first time I had seen photographs from this part of my life. Fran kept them perfectly preserved after my mother died nearly forty years earlier in 1976. She kept them all of her life.

Joyce concludes her letter by saying how she would "love to contact any other mothers who were present in Bethany between April and November 1951. It may help me to better understand the awful circumstances my mother endured there." The heartbreak of her story, the damage of forced separation, the lies and cover-ups, the dodgy arrangements around illegal adoptions, are all connected back to mother and baby homes, and the Bethany Home behaved in the same manner as the other homes, the pain is no less for the survivors because they were Protestant rather than Catholic. It is long overdue that we call a halt to this cruel exclusion of the survivors of the Bethany Home from redress. I ask the Minister of State to read Joyce's letter in full and give her a good response.

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