Survivor of Bethany home hits out at Irish government delays

Derek Linster’s teenage mother gave birth to him in the Bethany Mother and Baby Home in Dublin in 1941.

The death rate in the home was so bad that he believes the only reason he survived was because he was hospitalised with whooping cough, diphtheria, and gastroenteritis.

A total of 222 children died in the home in 27 years between 1922 and 1949, an average of eight children per year. The home was under state supervision and was managed by clerics from a range of Protestant denominations, including the Church of Ireland.

“I was told that I must have been born on a manure heap to have so many infections,” said Derek. Now in his late seventies, he suffered brutality and neglect in foster care and left school illiterate at 13.

This week Irish Minister for Children Katherine Zappone said the Irish Government had extended the deadline by yet another year for the commission investigating Irish mother and baby homes to make a final report.

Derek said: “Survivors used to say state policy was ‘deny until they die’. Now it is ‘delay and deny until they die’.”

The investigation of other mother and baby homes should not delay justice for the six elderly Bethany survivors, he added.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs told the News Letter that the Government “is on record as stating that it will not take steps which pre-empt the outcome of the Commission’s important work” now due in 2020.

But Senator David Norris slammed the government decision in the senate this week.

“I said that it was outrageous that the only Protestant institution involved should be denied this redress and that this should already have been done, as was originally requested by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin,” he told the News Letter.

Mr Linster said the Church of Ireland (CoI) and other Protestant churches should also accept responsibility, as CoI clerics were trustees of the Bethany home and the church supported it financially and referred women to it.

However a CoI spokesman said it did not own the home, an independent trust, and that it had lobbied the state for survivors for over a decade. It had also offered survivors pastoral support, he added.

Canon Ian Ellis, formerly editor of The Church of Ireland Gazette said: “From my understanding of the situation, while the Bethany Home was not run by the Church of Ireland, Church of Ireland figures were involved in its management, along with members of other Protestant churches.”

He added: “I welcome the news that the Republic of Ireland’s Department of Justice has indicated that the case of Bethany is under consideration and would urge a swift resolution of what has undoubtedly been a harrowing and lengthy campaign by the survivors.”

Paul Redmond, chair of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors Group, said Derek was the first campaigner for justice for survivors in 1993, and was “a hero” to many.

He said the total compensation bill for the Irish state for an estimated 90,000 “forced separations” of mothers from their children from 1922 to the present could be between €1-1.5bn.

“There is a lot of sleight of hand going on,” he told the News Letter. “Everyone is trying to wash their hands of everything. The Bethany survivors have been treated appallingly.”

While the Irish state has previously tried to deny responsibility for the home, substantial records have been found to show that it carried out regular inspections of conditions.

Mr Redmond said the survivors of the mother and baby homes, to which unmarried mothers were sent, should have been included in the Irish government apologies for children’s ‘industrial schools’ in the 1990s. The Irish government only relented to consider redress for mother and baby homes with the revelations of the 800 unmarked graves for babies found at one such home in Tuam in 2014.

The bodies of some of the babies, he said, had been found in a septic tank.