2,000 Irish children were illegally adopted in US from Magdalene Laundries

daithaic: highly cogent commentary. As suggested by another poster, this may be mostly a field trip of lawyers hunting for a pile of cash upon which to pounce...

daithaic: highly cogent commentary. As suggested by another poster, this may be mostly a field trip of lawyers hunting for a pile of cash upon which to pounce...

daithaic: highly cogent commentary. As suggested by another poster, this may be mostly a field trip of lawyers hunting for a pile of cash upon which to pounce...

Holy Catholic Ireland

What disturbs me the most about this is that my Church is still refusing at this very late date, to take ownership of their responsibility in this matter. It is absolutely horrifying, after all of the child rape cases, that the Church continues to stonewall on every last evil that it has perpetrated on the faithful. Little wonder that Catholics are leaving the Church in droves! Little wonder how few attend Sunday Mass.

daithaic, one could also absolve the Taliban for their attacks on Afghan women using your logic. The facts are, that if this behavior on the part of the state and church were made public, it would have been indefensible. To suggest that the working class knew and did nothing, is simply defending this outrageous behavior on the part of the Catholic Church and Irish government. I have heard this kind of defense before for other atrocities (some much worse), and it has always seemed to be that, a defense, an excuse! The state and the Church are responsible for their actions. They may have colluded with the police and the intelligentsia, but DO NOT blame the Irish working class for this outrage!

So our Catholic Church and the Irish government behaved like the Taliban?

I would not defend these Magdalen Laundries for a moment but there is a certain collective amnesia at work in the Irish psyche. They reflected accurately the reactionary social consensus of the time and the social control exercised by the Church and State with which most people including the educational system, courts, Gardai and much else were happy to collude. It may suit now to blame the "State" as something removed from the population but in fact the vast majority of the Irish people colluded and agreed with the repressive social system of the time and were happy for people who disagreed with the thought control to emigrate and to dump our "problems" abroad. Ireland was not a prison but the social consensus made it so and the Church and States actions and control reflected this reality.

I would not defend these Magdalen Laundries for a moment but there is a certain collective amnesia at work in the Irish psyche. They reflected accurately the reactionary social consensus of the time and the social control exercised by the Church and State with which most people including the educational system, courts, Gardai and much else were happy to collude. It may suit now to blame the "State" as something removed from the population but in fact the vast majority of the Irish people colluded and agreed with the repressive social system of the time and were happy for people who disagreed with the thought control to emigrate and to dump our "problems" abroad. Ireland was not a prison but the social consensus made it so and the Church and States actions and control reflected this reality.

I believe there's some confusion in this article. There was a difference between mother-baby homes and Magdalene Laundries. While many of our mothers (my own included) spent time in Magdalene Laundries either before or after having a child out of wedlock, the adoptions were organised by mother-baby homes/adoption societies in Ireland, not the Laundries themselves. It is important to make this distinction clear.

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Hat's off to those now adult children. How comforting especially to the mother's that bore you.

M McGRath and Thomas need areality check and move on from the land of denial they live in. Their comments are disgusting and do not deserve a reply.

What a serious subject this is turning into. It was prominently reported on the BBC London TV news tonight, and should be front page news in tomorrows papers. What's disturbing for many is the concealment actions of the Church, and the person who endeavoured to make sure the truth was never revealed. In other words 'to carry one as if nothing untoward had happened, and the rights of the mothers and adopted children were off little consequence. We can surmise that off the 2000 adopted children shipped to the USA, they must have by now at least 12500 descendants, being 12500 people who have Irish relations they'll never meet, see or whose company they may have enjoyed. No doubt some of these will visit Ireland one day; and it seems a great pity that they could have an aunt or uncle, brother and sister in the next street or town and will never know. The Magadlene Laundry adoption records need to be sealed, protected and handed over to the Irish State Archives for safety, so when some ''lost to Ireland'' child makes an enquiry asking for information on his Irish birth parents he/she can be supplied with copies of the original records and encouraged to meet them. One hopes there will be dozens of happy meetings and tears of joy when this occurs.

What a serious subject this is turning into. It was prominently reported on the BBC London TV news tonight, and should be front page news in tomorrows papers. What's disturbing for many is the concealment actions of the Church, and the person who endeavoured to make sure the truth was never revealed. In other words 'to carry one as if nothing untoward had happened, and the rights of the mothers and adopted children were off little consequence. We can surmise that off the 2000 adopted children shipped to the USA, they must have by now at least 12500 descendants, being 12500 people who have Irish relations they'll never meet, see or whose company they may have enjoyed. No doubt some of these will visit Ireland one day; and it seems a great pity that they could have an aunt or uncle, brother and sister in the next street or town and will never know. The Magadlene Laundry adoption records need to be sealed, protected and handed over to the Irish State Archives for safety, so when some ''lost to Ireland'' child makes an enquiry asking for information on his Irish birth parents he/she can be supplied with copies of the original records and encouraged to meet them. One hopes there will be dozens of happy meetings and tears of joy when this occurs.