Witnesses reveal the shocking inside story of the Mother and Baby Homes scandal that sparked a government inquiry into the fate of unmarried women who fell pregnant in 20th century Ireland.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - I love this place.
00:06 It's passion, it's poetry, it's people.
00:10 I love its people, but there are dark secrets
00:14 buried underneath this waterlogged surface.
00:17 The horrors of the recent past are oozing to the surface.
00:21 Women and children's lives were brutally shattered.
00:24 - The mother and baby homes are really a reflection
00:29 of the focus on curtailing women in the Irish Free State.
00:33 - In Ireland, religious faith is no mere convention.
00:36 We took their babies and we trafficked them,
00:38 or we neglected them, or we denied them,
00:40 to the point of their disappearance.
00:42 - If all the remains are not in this one,
00:44 I know there are scattered, there are other pits.
00:47 - My only son was falling in love with somebody,
00:52 and for that, I got punished 'cause I wasn't married.
00:56 - As far as I'm concerned, I was abducted.
00:58 - You couldn't ask, you just couldn't ask
01:00 what you wanted to ask.
01:01 - I know how he survived, and I can't figure out to this day
01:04 why he would have beaten me.
01:06 - She took him off me and turned her back and walked away,
01:10 and it broke my heart.
01:11 - There are people who've been fighting all their lives
01:16 to be heard, looking for justice.
01:19 - Shoot me, it hurts, but the truth sets you free.
01:22 - I am flabbergasted and upset by the stories that you hear,
01:26 and there are thousands of them out there.
01:29 - There's lots of unanswered questions,
01:30 and we'd like to get answers to them.
01:32 (dramatic music)
01:35 (dramatic music)
01:38 (dramatic music)
01:41 (upbeat music)
01:43 (upbeat music)