15,000 illegal adoptions in Ireland, mothers told babies had died | Hacker News Reader

15,000 illegal adoptions in Ireland, mothers told babies had died

irishcentral.com

29 pointsvezycash18 comments

This article was really frustrating to read. It never actually explained what illegal adoption entails. It said some mothers were told their babies had died. So, what, these adoptions took place without consent of the birth parents? I wouldn't call that illegal adoption, I'd call it kidnapping.

> I wouldn't call that illegal adoption, I'd call it kidnapping.

Taking the children from their birth parents under false pretenses is kidnapping, adopting the kidnapped children out is illegal adoption. They aren't mutually exclusive acts.

I don't think that was GP's point though.

Yeah. My main point is that, if these babies were really being taken without consent, then calling it "illegal adoption" is like calling bank robbery "speeding" because the robbers broke the speed limit in their getaway car.

The term "illegal adoption" carries connotations of (intentionally or otherwise) misfiled paperwork, not kidnapping.

That would imply state employees would be punished for it, wouldn't it ?

In order for this to happen, a great many hospitals would need to be willing participants, a great many adoption agencies, as well as all state services that audited controlled them. It is also reported that the police functioned as enforcers, which of course must mean the police and justice system were not just in on it, but actively supporting it.

Additionally the question rises how this could have been coordinated, if not by the state. Given that it required coordination across faraway parts of the state, a LOT of the government must have been involved.

Needless to say, it has been decided who will be checking this issue exists:

> The review of samples of records from other adoption societies will be conducted by Marion Reynolds, a former deputy director of social services in Northern Ireland, and will be completed within four months.

You just can't make this up. "Yeah, we're going to investigate that holocaust thing. Who you ask ? A. H. (junior) will be leading the investigation. Why ?"

Same exact reaction here. How do you just take away a baby and tell the parent the baby died without some kind of evidence or explanation? Is this in a hospital??

Yes. The Reddit thread was really interesting because some Irish commented, and they talked about how the Catholic hospitals and the Gardai (local police) worked together in this scheme.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8ppl72/15000_ill...

If any of this is true, it's absolutely no wonder that Irish Catholicism is in severe decline.

Sometimes the Catholic nuns would tell a young unwed mother she was unfit, and they would escape the hospital with their baby only to get home and find the nuns waiting for them with the Gardai, or they would show up later.

In other cases they would simply show them a dead baby and ship the baby overseas to be sold in America. Some Spanish commenters came along and explained that the problem was even worse in Spain.

One commenter seemed to be saying they didn't always go so far as overseas, as they met their sibling one day when they moved in next door as an adult. If the Reddit commenters are to be believed, then so is the terrible, barely informative article, I'm afraid.

You use the name "gardai" as if it is different from "police". This was mass-kidnapping of babies by the police, it's that simple. It was not a few catholic nuns in hospitals, as you yourself point out. They participated, but the police were the enforcers, which means hospitals, police, justice system were all involved.

Needless to say, nobody is asking the obvious question. How can a police force that did this be trusted ? The justice system that directed them ?

I mean sure you can blame catholicism, but what about the many state agencies organizing these mass-kidnappings, which included the police force, the state controlling them and the justice system itself ?

But no worries. All will be checked. By whom you ask ?

By ... the person that used to be in charge of the adoption agencies ... Yeah. No problem here at all. I'm sure the guilty parties are about to be punished, no doubt.

So we can pretty reliably say that the current state and justice system is still actively working to hide this (and then of course the question comes: why ? Are they still doing it ?)

> You use the name "gardai" as if it is different from "police"

Indeed this is just the Irish word for police, and it is different in only one way that I'm aware of, that the Irish government has long been inextricably linked to the Catholic church. You absolutely can't blame one without the other, in every instance where they've shamed the nation, they almost certainly and universally acted in concert.

I have no insider knowledge, my Irish heritage is several generations removed, I don't "trace my roots" back to any clan or keep contact with relatives, and I'm not able to become a citizen of Ireland by birthright, etc, so take anything I say with a grain of salt, I'm just as outside as you... (assuming)

This is a terrible story, and I don't think you can explain it other than "the shame must be hidden away, at all costs."

Everything I've heard from media sources that interviewed people who were victimized by the establishment and the church, not just in this case but in other cases where the church and government agents provided cover for large scale abuses... it's amazing to hear so many that are not the least bit interested in "justice" in the way of retribution or punishment for the offenders; many of them just want their story told, so they can have their true identities, and actually start the healing process.

I agree with point made by 300bps - concrete information is necessary, but such 'tolerated' behaviour by the institutions affiliated with the Irish government is not unknown. This is not necessarily down to vice, but to a bizarre fastening to a cultural dysfunction that is rampant and "normal" in the Irish government if you were to accept their duplicity. No-one can get fired, there is no accountability, their stance on life and well being is well out of line with most modern Irish people (which thankfully voted yes recently), and intergenerational guilt prevents them from separating the catholic church from state. To be clear, I say this as an Irish atheist and with an already exiting intention to leave. Apart from the amount of hurt and pain that these absolutely unfounded "traditional" practices have, they serve no valid purpose and there is no one to blame. Such a duplicitous culture. Such an island of backwards savages if you were to assume the government represents the people who actually live here. Apologies for ranting. I hope the human beings that have had their identities distorted have the courage to find themselves and to accept themselves unconditionally.

This strikes me of Ireland's version of Snowden, in that we essentially knew about it all along, but it's taken the arrival of wide-spread evidence for anything to actually happen.

The good news is that it is actually happening. I don't actually think we're going to see anyone punished, but we are seeing change, which is much more important. Ireland's progressed a long way from so narrowly accepting divorce, in an astonishingly short amount of time. It's become quite clear that the current generation aren't going to allow the Church free reign anymore.

From the article, there are 126 known cases. The 15,000 figure is from a quote note directly attributed in the article which said:

“I suspect every single adoption agency in the country is involved, that’s 150,000 babies, it would be amazing if at least ten percent of them were not illegal.”

This article is about a related scandal and may provide more context: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...

Ireland had a practice of shaming and pressuring unmarried women to give up their babies for adoption. This pressure came from families, church, and the broader society. These babies were treated as second-class citizens in orphanages. Some (many) of them died, others were adopted. So while the entire practice was abhorrent, these children were taken through coercion, not kidnapping.

This article is terrible and seems to have been flagged off the front page, but how do you know that it didn't happen exactly like they say?

The Reddit thread I linked below had corroborating witnesses showing up to say that is exactly how it happened. Some children were shipped overseas with their mothers' coerced consent, some parents were shown dead babies and their children were never heard from again.

Some were left to die and tossed down a hole without a funeral, some were made to work as slaves in the orphanage... and it's not the only primarily Catholic country where this scam was prevalent; if the stories are to be believed this was an order of magnitude more common in Spain around the same time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8ppl72/comment/e...

“I suspect every single adoption agency in the country is involved, that’s 150,000 babies, it would be amazing if at least ten percent of them were not illegal.”

Clickbait. Misleading.

This sort of thing also ties in nicely with the rumors/conspiracy theories around Chief Justice Roberts.

This was a major plot point in Sons of Anarchy almost a decade ago.

Life imitating art, or art imitating life?

The 126 established cases were registered by St Patrick’s Guild adoption society between 1946 and 1969.

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