Letter to Hon. Bertie Ahern
Bastard Nation
The Adoptee Rights Organization
December 10, 2003
Hon. Bertie Ahern, TD
Department of the Taoiseach
Government Buildings, Merrion Street
Dublin 2
Republic of Ireland
Dear Mr. Ahern:
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, supports the call of the Magdalene Memorial Committee, AdoptionIreland, and the Natural Parents Network of Ireland for a State Inquiry into the peculiar circumstances surrounding the deaths of women in the “care” of the Sisters of Charity Magdalene Laundries, and the bodies exhumed from the graveyard of the Laundry in Dublin High Park, Drumcondra.
The scandal of the Magdalene Laundries is well known in the United States and Canada. Our adoption reform community is populated with Irish adoptees sent here decades ago. Some are members of Bastard Nation.
Bastard Nation is deeply concerned that the lives, deaths, and dignity of the Magdalene women will evaporate in a misguided if not dishonest attempt by the state to bury the history of these women’s misery and despair, to obliterate their names and exile them to oblivion. As the mothers, the sisters, and the daughters of the Irish nation who suffered under a rigid double-standard regime simply because they were women, they deserve better.
The latest chapter in this saga of shame, the disposition of bodies exhumed at High Park, leaves many unanswered questions:
- The unexplained deaths of numerous Magdalene women and girls and the circumstance surrounding their deaths.
- The apparent failure of the Sisters of Charity to report the deaths of Magdalene women in their charge or to even keep records of their deaths.
- The circumstances surrounding the burial of the Magdalene women without notification to authorities.
- The circumstances surrounding the exhumation and cremation of the bodies of Magdalene women.
- The identities of the additional 22 unidentified bodies found in the graveyard.
- The lack of real names of the victims of the Magdalene system.
- The lack of criminal prosecution of those responsible for unlawful activities regarding the Magdalenes and compensatory payment to survivors.
That the names on gravestones do not match the names on the exhumation license alone should have been enough to set off an investigation. Yet the Department of the Environment, without question, supplied a second license to permit the exhumations without investigation or even a request for information from the Sisters of Charity. Who is hiding what and why?
The injustice done to the Magdalene women cannot be undone, but in death they can be honored, their dignity restored, by a full State Inquiry into their deaths. We ask that you grant them that respect. Open a full State Inquiry.
Sincerely yours,
Marley Elizabeth Greiner
Executive Chair
For the Executive Committee:
Dr. David Ansardi
Donna Martz
Natalie Proctor Servant
Pamela J. Zaebst
Cc: Brian Cowen, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Michael McDowell, Ministry for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Michael Martin, Department of Health and Children
