"They are two-feet down from where we are standing," Catherine Corless said. "The bones have mingled together and water got in and thrashed them around. But they're there."
Corless is the local historian who a decade ago alerted Ireland, and the world, to a shocking truth about this Galway town: for decades an institution for unmarried mothers put the remains of dead babies and children in a disused subterranean septic tank.
Corless found that, between 1925 and 1961, 796 children died at the St Mary's mother and baby home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours order - but there were no burial records. Now a team of forensic investigators led by Daniel Mac Sweeney, a former International Committee of the Red Cross envoy, has been tasked with exhuming, analysing and identifying the remains.
"There has been nothing on this scale before in Ireland," Roderic O'Gorman, the children's minister, said in an interview. "This will be one of the most complex operations of its kind in the world."
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der July 07, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der July 07, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
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