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Articles / Mums blamed for deaths of their babies in NHS's worst ever hospital.....

« on: December 11, 2020, 12:09:23 PM »

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-maternity-services-across-england-23145628?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=12at12_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

Mums blamed for deaths of their babies in NHS's worst ever hospital maternity scandal

Minister for Patient Safety and Maternity Nadine Dorries, said her "heartfelt sympathies" are with families as 1,862 cases are being investigated after a series of baby deaths at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust

By Martin Bagot Health and Science editor and Douglas Patient Assistant News Editor

11:04, 10 DEC 2020Updated12:48, 10 DEC 2020

An independent review at a hospital trust shows mums were blamed for deaths of their babies in NHS's worst ever hospital maternity scandal.  The damning report, released today, found 13 mothers died between 2000 and 2019 in the care of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.  Others were called pathetic and lazy or left screaming for hours without treatment.  In one horrendous case, a woman had repeated attempts at forceps delivery but the baby sustained multiple skull fractures and subsequently died.  It does not say how many babies died or suffered serious injury, but between 2013 and 2016, maternity death rates were 10 per cent higher than in comparable hospital trusts.  The report identifies seven "immediate and essential actions" needed to improve maternity care in England.  The inquiry into deaths and allegations of poor care at the hospital trust was set up in 2017 and is now examining the cases of 1,862 families, with the majority of incidents occurring between 2000 and 2019.  In a press conference following the release of the review, former senior midwife Donna Ockenden, chair of the independent maternity review, said mothers had been "denied the opportunity to voice their concerns about the care they have received for a long, long time".

She said the care at the trust had "caused untold pain and distress, including, sadly, deaths of mothers and babies".

She added: "Many families have suffered long-term mental health problems.  They say their suffering has been made worse by the handling of their cases by the trust."

She said "one of the most disappointing and deeply worrying themes" was the "reported lack of kindness and compassion from some members of the maternity team at the trust".

The chief executive of the trust apologised for the "pain and distress" caused to mothers and families due to poor maternity care after the review found staff had been "flippant", "abrupt" and "dismissive".

The damning 48-page report found:

    A lack of compassion and kindness from some maternity staff

    Concerns of families about their care were dismissed and not listened to
    Midwives failed to recognise when pregnancies were not progressing normally

    Repeated failures to communicate problems to senior staff

    Inappropriate use of drugs, including oxytocin, to speed up labour

    Errors in monitoring the heartbeats
 of babies
    A culture of reducing the number of caesarean births without considering if it was causing harm

The "emerging findings" report was published on Thursday, based on a review of a selection of 250 cases of concern, which include the original 23 cases which initiated the inquiry.  Ms Ockenden described the initial recommendations - including a call for risk assessments throughout pregnancy - as "must dos" which should be implemented immediately.  Responding to the report, patient safety and maternity minister Nadine Dorries said she expects SaTH to act on the recommendations immediately following "shocking" failings at the trust.  Ms Dorries said in a statement: "My heartfelt sympathies are with every family who has been affected by the shocking failings in Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust's maternity services.  I would like to thank Donna Ockenden and her team for their hard work in producing this first report and making these vital recommendations so lessons can be learnt as soon as possible.  I expect the trust to act upon the recommendations immediately, and for the wider maternity service right across the country to consider important actions they can take to improve safety for mothers, babies and families."

Why an independent review took place into maternity failings at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust  Baby deaths at the NHS trust became the subject of an investigation in 2017 at the request of then health secretary Jeremy Hunt.  The review set out to initially look at 23 cases, which has since increased three times and now stands at a total of 1,862 investigations.  The majority of incidents occurred between 2000 and 2019 at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust.  Concerns were raised by the parents of Kate Stanton-Davies and Pippa Griffiths, who died shortly after birth in 2009 and 2016 respectively.  They, along with a further 21 families, started a campaign for an investigation into the circumstances of their children’s birth and called on lessons to be learned.  The review panel consists of experts in anaesthetics, infection prevention, ambulatory care, midwifery, neonatologists and obstetricians who are practicing NHS clinicians in London and south of England.  Former senior midwife Donna Ockenden is the chair of the independent maternity review.  West Mercia Police also launched their own investigation to establish if there are any grounds for criminal proceedings.  A total of 13 mothers died between 2000 and 2019 and maternity death rates were at one point 10 per cent higher than in comparable hospital trusts.  "This Government is utterly committed to patient safety, eradicating avoidable harms and making the NHS the safest place in the world to give birth.  We will work closely with NHS England and Improvement, as well as Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, to consider next steps."

Commenting on her initial findings, Ms Ockenden said: "Over the last three years, this independent review team has been listening to and working with families and the trust in order to try and understand what happened.  We have been listening so that we can enable the trust and wider maternity services across England to be clear about the improvements needed.  This will ensure that maternity services are enabled to continuously improve the safety of the care they provide to women and families.  Today we are explaining in this first report local actions for learning and immediate and essential actions which we believe will improve maternity care, not only at this trust but across England so that the experiences women and families have described to us are not replicated elsewhere.  With a focus on safety, the 27 local actions for learning and seven immediate and essential actions in this report are 'must dos' that need to be implemented now at pace."

The inquiry was commissioned following concerns raised by the parents of Kate Stanton-Davies and Pippa Griffiths, who died shortly after birth in 2009 and 2016 respectively.  This report found both of their deaths as "avoidable".  Parents of Kate, Rhiannon Davies and Richard Stanton, lost their daughter Kate at just six-hours-old after woefully poor care was afforded to her.  An inquest held in November 2012 found that Kate's death was avoidable, a finding that the trust chose to ignore.  West Mercia Police have also launched their own investigation to establish if there are any grounds for criminal proceedings.  The 27 local actions for learning involve recommendations around general maternity care, maternal deaths, obstetric anaesthesia and neonatal care.  Louise Barnett, chief executive at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said: "I would like to thank Donna Ockenden for this report but more importantly the families for coming forward.  As the chief executive now and on behalf of the whole trust, I want to say how very sorry we are for the pain and distress that has been caused to mothers and their families due to poor maternity care at our trust.  We commit to implementing all of the actions in this report and I can assure the women and families who use our service that if they raise any concerns about their care, they will be listened to and action will be taken."

557

Articles / The stolen climate crisis babies: US politician jailed for selling children.....

« on: December 08, 2020, 11:48:29 AM »

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/stolen-babies-marshall-islands-paul-petersen-climate-change-b1765267.html

The stolen climate crisis babies: US politician jailed for selling children of mothers desperate to escape environmental catastrophe

The Marshall Islands sit barely six feet above sea level in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and its people are among the most vulnerable in the world to the complex consequences of climate change, writes Louise Boyle

The former politician has been sentenced to six years for running an illegal adoption racket which took advantage of impoverished women from the Marshall Islands, a low-lying nation in the Pacific Ocean, where more and more citizens are being forced to flee because of the climate crisis.  Paul Petersen, a onetime Republican county assessor who was also an adoption attorney, illegally paid women to come to the US to give up their babies to Americans. Petersen had at least 70 adoptions cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas over three years.  Petersen “manipulated birth mothers into consenting to adoptions they did not fully understand,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Fowlkes of the Western District of Arkansas.  Judge Timothy Brooks, who imposed the sentence from Fayetteville, Arkansas on Tuesday, said that Petersen abused his position as an attorney by misleading or instructing others to lie to courts in adoptions that wouldn’t have been approved had the truth been told to them.  The judge said Petersen turned what should be joyous adoption occasions into “a baby-selling enterprise.”  The Marshall Islands were formerly used as a nuclear bomb testing site by the US during the Cold War arms race and since, islanders have had high rates of cancer and birth defects.  The islands gained independence from the US in 1986 but a  “relationship of free association” exists between the countries, meaning that eligible Marshallese may work, live, and study in America without a visa. However, Marshall Islands citizens have been prohibited from traveling to the US for adoption purposes since 2003.  Earlier in his life, Petersen, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christs of Latter-day Saints, had been a Mormon missionary in the Marshall Islands, where he became fluent in the Marshallese language.  The former public official had claimed that he carried out hundreds of legal adoptions after he discovered a niche locating homes for vulnerable children from the Marshall Islands and helping needy mothers who wanted a more stable family life for their children.  But Petersen’s crimes illustrate a worrying nexus between populations in some of the poorest regions of the world and their vulnerabilities to exploitation on the frontlines of the climate crisis.  The Republic of the Marshall Islands sits barely six feet above sea level in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, several thousands miles in each direction from some of its nearest neighbors like Hawaii, Papua New Guinea and Japan.  A recent study from the University of Hawaii estimated that the nation of around 55,000 people could be underwater as soon as 2080.  An unseasonal cyclone swept through the islands in 2015 tearing off roofs, cutting power for half the 25,000 people living in the capital Majuro, and rushing ships ashore.  Freshwater is persistently under threat and only flows for 12 hours on a regular week, HuffPost reported in 2015. Without fresh water, dehydration, malnutrition and diseases can follow quickly behind.  In 2018, the Marshall Islands were the first country to submit updated “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) countries' commitments under the Paris Accord to reduce emissions two years ahead of schedule for the COP26 climate talks (now postponed until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic).  The Marshall Islands promised to reduce emissions to 58 per cent below 2010 levels by 2035, and pledged to reach net-zero by 2050.  The Marshall Islands are adapting raising sections of Majuro, improving freshwater catchment and slowing erosion by restoring coral reefs that protect the coastlines but they have repeatedly pleaded with the rest of the world to help by raising their own climate ambitions.  Earlier this year President David Kabua, warned that his country risks being swept away by rising seas and urged other nations at the UN General Assembly to act, noting that “small island and atoll nations like mine do not have time for paper promises”.

But as beating back the rising tides becomes more difficult, many see no option but to leave if an opportunity arises.  Melisa Laelan, the founder and head of the Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese, told The New Yorker earlier this year that as climate change worsens, "the numbers have been getting larger each year” of people leaving the islands.   Many Marshallese, some 12-15,000 people, have ended up in the incongruous destination of Springdale in the northwest corner of Arkansas.  The community credit a man called John Moody, who left the islands on a scholarship to study at an Oklahoma college and moved to Springdale in the early 1980s to work at Tyson Foods, one of many poultry-processing plants in the town. Mr Moody sent back word that jobs were available and thousands of fellow Marshallese followed in his footsteps. However pay hovers around minimum wage meaning that those who arrive often struggle to make ends meet.  There is also a high birth rate among Marshallese women and rare use of birth control, a piece earlier this year in The New Yorker  noted. Additionally, there is a chasm when it comes to how adoption is understood in the Marshall Islands compared to the US. On the islands, adoption is common in families and children live between households, maintaining close relationships with their birth parents.  As The New Yorker, along with an earlier 2015 article in The New Republic , reported, a maelstrom of cultural differences, language barriers and, in some cases, predatory behavior by lawyers and intermediaries, has meant that Marshallese women have given babies up for adoption without appearing to fully grasp that they will never see their children again.  Shelma Lamy was a 20-year-old single mother to a young daughter when she was flown to the US at seven months’ pregnant by Petersen in 2015 and given $1,500 a month for expenses. Immediately after she gave birth, her baby boy was adopted by a white couple from Utah. Ms Lamy had signed the adoption paperwork relying on a Marshallese interpreter provided by Petersen’s agency.  Ms Lamy went on to have two more babies which were adopted through Petersen’s agency.  “I was told that they will come back to me when they turn eighteen. When they finish school, the adoptive parents will tell the children about me, and eventually they will come back,”  she told The New Yorker, partly with acceptance that sadly this ultimately may not happen.  “The adoption was the only way I could get here,” another heavily-pregnant Marshallese woman in the US told the magazine. 

Arkansas law allows for closed adoptions, which means “there is no interaction between the birth parents and the adoptive parents. There is usually no identifying information shared between either side".

Migration and displacement due to climate-driven events droughts, floods, hurricanes, wildfires will likely be a hallmark of the coming decades, as some of impacts of global heating are already locked in.  “The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. There is at least a one in five chance of it temporarily exceeding 1.5C by 2024,” said the World Meteorological Organization’s secretary-general Professor Petteri Taalas on Wednesday following the release of its annual report which concluded that this year will be among the three hottest ever.

In 2018, The World Bank estimated that three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia) will generate 143 million more climate migrants by 2050.  How to protect millions of vulnerable people from schemes crafted by criminals like Petersen is a mounting challenge.  The Arkansas judge who sentenced Petersen described his adoption practice as a “criminal livelihood”, adding that he also ripped off taxpayers at the same time he was elected to serve them.  Brooks rejected Petersen’s claims that he initially thought he was acting within the bounds of the law, but later realized what he was doing was illegal.  “You knew that lying and making these false statements to immigration officials and state courts was wrong,” said Brooks, who gave Petersen two years longer in prison than sentencing guidelines recommended.

Petersen was sentenced in Arkansas to six years in federal prison, the first of three punishments he’ll face.  Appearing by videoconference, Petersen told the judge that his actions in the Arkansas case weren’t indicative of who he is as a person and offered an apology to any birth mothers who felt disrespected by his treatment of them.  Petersen said he was horrified to learn that subordinates he did not name during the hearing had mistreated birth mothers, though he claimed he didn’t know about it at the time and did not condone it.  “I take responsibility for my lack of oversight,” Petersen said.

Petersen, who earlier pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit human smuggling in Arkansas, faces sentencing next month for convictions in Utah and Arizona.  Federal prosecutors have said the former assessor responsible for determining property values in the county that encompasses Phoenix defrauded state courts, violated an international adoption compact and took advantage of mothers and adoptive families for his own profit.  The money Petersen made from the adoption scheme helped pay for his lavish lifestyle, including expensive trips, luxury cars and multiple residences, prosecutors said.  Prosecutors said the passports of some birth mothers were taken away to prevent them from leaving the United States and that they were threatened with arrest if they tried to back out of adoptions. Petersen’s attorneys vigorously disputed that their client played any role in keeping some of the mothers’ passports, much less condoned it.  He is scheduled to be sentenced on 22 January in Phoenix for submitting false applications to Arizona’s Medicaid system so the mothers could receive state-funded health coverage even though he knew they didn’t live in the state and for providing documents to a county juvenile court that contained false information.  Petersen has said he has since paid back $670,000 in health care costs to the state of more than $800,000 that prosecutors cited in his indictment.  His sentencing in Utah on human smuggling and other convictions is set for 20 January.  He quit as Maricopa County’s assessor in January amid pressure from other county officials to resign.  Petersen in a letter to the Arkansas judge several ago said he is now ashamed, as a fiscal conservative, for imposing the pregnancy labor and delivery costs on Arizona taxpayers.  Some families whose adoptions were handled by Petersen wrote letters to the judge in support of the former assessor.

558

Articles / Pictured: Mairead Philpott is seen on the streets for the first time since ....

« on: November 30, 2020, 11:06:25 AM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8999033/Mairead-Philpott-freed-halfway-17-year-sentence-killing-six-children-fire.html

Pictured: Mairead Philpott is seen on the streets for the first time since being freed less than halfway through her 17-year sentence for killing her six children in a house fire

    Mairead Philpott killed her six children after burning down family home in Derby
    The 38-year-old is 'delighted' at being given her earliest possible release date
    She left HMP Send in Surrey yesterday after serving eight-and-a-half years
    Pictured entering a halfway house where she will spend next three months

By William Cole For Mailonline

Published: 00:00, 30 November 2020 | Updated: 00:48, 30 November 2020

A mother who killed her six children in a fire has taken her first steps of freedom after being released from less than halfway through her 17-year prison sentence.  Mairead Philpott was said to be 'delighted' at being given her earliest possible release date from HMP Send in Surrey.  The 38-year-old, who killed her children after burning down the family home in Derby in 2012, was driven in an Audi Q3 as part of a convoy to a halfway house.  Photos show the killer wearing a yellow parka-style jacket with the hood pulled over her head as she was escorted by plain-clothes police into a 20-bed hostel.  Hostel staff and officers are seen carried in her belongings, including in a see-through prison bag containing toiletries, slippers and clothes.   She is due to stay at the hostel for three months before being freed under a new name, according to The Sun. She has a 7pm to 7am curfew.  News of her imminent release was slammed by the Centre For Crime Prevention think-tank, which said: 'This is not justice.'   

The taxpayer will cover thousands of pounds worth of costs for Philpott to stay in a hostel with a new identity.  Mick Philpott led Mairead and the couple's friend Mosely in what was a scheme to get a bigger council house by burning down his Derby home and framing ex-lover Lisa Willis for the crime.  His intention was to rescue the sleeping children through an upstairs window but the plan went disastrously wrong and the blaze claimed the lives of Duwayne, 13, Jade, 10, John, nine, Jack, seven, Jesse, six, and Jayden, five.  They all died from smoke inhalation.  Initially the couple received an outpouring of sympathy, and wept at a press conference as they appealed for help to find the killer or killers.  But their behaviour later aroused suspicions and the pair were subsequently charged alongside Mosely.  At Mick Philpott's sentencing, the judge described the plot as 'a wicked and dangerous plan' that was 'outside the comprehension of any right-thinking person'.   She said there was 'no precedent' for the case, describing it as a 'uniquely grave set of offences'.  The Philpotts and Mosely were found guilty of manslaughter. Mick was sentenced to life in prison and Mairead and Mosely to 17 years.  The killer couple divorced after being jailed.  The father-of-seventeen, who married Mairead in 2003, used his children to drag in an astonishing £60,000 a year in benefits.  Philpott, who had previously been jailed for stabbing his schoolgirl lover 27 times, wove a web of lies trying to get away with the crime and even plotted to 'get rich quick' off generous donations from the local community meant to pay for the funerals of his children.  David Spencer at the Centre for Crime Prevention said: 'It makes an absolute mockery of the UK's criminal justice system.  She has served barely more than a year for each of the six innocent lives she callously took away.'

A source also told the publication: 'Her convoy was like one given to a celebrity rather than a mum who killed her six children.'

She will be living in a 20-bed half-way house and carried a bag filled with her belongings as she walked inside.  She will leave after three months with a new name and a 7pm to 7am curfew.  Last night, Philpott's mother Vera, 62, said she was angry her daughter had been released so early.  In October, it emerged that Mick Philpott didn't want to visit his son, 13, on his deathbed as the teenager battled injuries from the fire started by his father.  Revealing the harrowing detail for the first time in Channel 5's 5 Mistakes That Caught A Killer retired Detective Superintendent Paul Callum, who helped lead the investigation said Philpott had to be convinced by support officers to visit dying son Duwayne.  After finally agreeing to go, he flirted with staff and his behaviour left detectives convinced the father-of-17 was responsible for his children's deaths.  Philpott was sentenced to life in prison and Mairead to 17 years after their children Jade, ten, John, nine, Jack, seven, Jesse, six and Jayden, five, died from smoke inhalation in the May 2012 fire at the family home in Osmaston, Derby.  The documentary lays bare the five mistakes committed by Mick, Mairead and their accomplice Paul Mosley, which included the couple's suspicious press conference days after the fire, and Mick's inappropriate behaviour at the hospital and mortuary.  The programme also looks at the couple's outrageous night out that saw Philpott sing Elvis songs at a local pub in the wake of his children's deaths, the conversations between Mick and Mairead recorded by police and the petrol found on his clothes.  'He didn't want to go across to Birmingham where Duwayne was effectively dying from his injuries,' Callum said.

'And my understanding his that the family liaison officers had to persuade him to go across to Birmingham to see Duwayne,' he added.

Once he finally made the visit, officers were tipped off that Phillpot had acted inappropriately and flirted with nursing staff looking after his dying son.  Philpott was equally as inappropriate when he visited the Derby mortuary to formally identified his dead children.  Callum revealed: 'He chatted up the mortuary technicians.  He made inappropriate comments about their breasts, about things he wanted to do with them sexually.  He would then collapse into a pile and pretend he was upset. Then he’d sit up and say something inappropriate. He was a very strange character.  At the mortuary we know that he called his children "little s***s", which in any context that children have died, I don’t know how that can be deemed as appropriate.'

Mick's long-time friend Mick Russell, who has since been one of his prison pen-pals, accompanied him to the mortuary and recounted the chilling moment in the documentary.  'He was smiling and cracking jokes and that. And then we went in and had the children in the room,' Russell said.

The family friend said he was more upset about the death of the children than his pal appeared to be.  'They was all lined up. Five little kids lying there with burns on their arms and hands. I just broke down crying.'

Philpott suspicious antics were one of the five main mistakes which led to his conviction.  The documentary lists the four others, starting by the press conference which was given by Mick and Mairead after the fire, and which was deemed disingenuous by many.  Local reporter Martin Naylor, who was at the press conference for the Derby Telegraph, said that all journalists present could tell the couple's grief was 'crocodile tears,' as they dabbed their dry eyes with tissues.  'We all looked at each other and our faces had changed and that was when all of us thought "something's not right",' Naylor said.

'I think what he was trying to do is sort of say to everybody: "This is how victims behaved, now I've done that, that's the end of it", and then the case would move on and perhaps the heat on him would have gone away,' officer Callum guessed.

'After the press conference we were getting calls from everybody saying: "It's obvious it's Mick and Mairead, why are you not arresting him",' he added.

Martin Naylor also recounted how Mick attempted to cash in on the teddy bears left by well-wishers in front of the house by trying to sell them 

A visit to a local pub, the Navigation Inn was also one of the incriminating mistakes made by the couple in the run up to their arrest.  'They did think they were celebrities, landlady of the Inn Jeanette Doherry said.  'I would say they were enjoying the attention.  They were drinking double Jack Daniel's, they appeared to be very tipsy, they were kissing and touching each other and he's running his hand through her hair,' she recounted. 

It wasn't very appropriate.  He was singing 'Suspicious Minds [by Elvis Presley] which was a very strange song to pick,' Doherty added.

'And everybody was saying "Why would he be doing this after his children have died?". They weren't grieving parents.'

During the investigation, with their house destroyed by the fire, Mick and Mairead were staying in a hotel, which, unbeknownst to them, had been tapped by police.  The couple's third mistake was to discuss their police interviews in their hotel room, trying to get their stories to match.  In outrageous recording which can be heard in the documentary, Mick could be heard asking his wife: 'What did you say about how many times I went up ladders?  And Mairead could be heard replying: 'I lost count how may times you went up the ladders.'

The couple had tried to paint Mick as a hero that had climbed the ladders several times to save the kids from the blaze.  The police also tapped a police van transporting Mairead and Mick to prison after their arrest.  Mick could be heard whispering: 'Are you sticking to the story?' to his wife.

Another mistake was that, early on in the investigation, Mick blamed his ex-mistress, who had left him months before the blaze, for the fire.  This led police to talking to her, Callum explained.  'In the first 24 hours, Mick was telling anybody he could that it was his ex-girlfriend who had started the fire because of the legal court case and that he had been harassed by her,' he said.

'We deliberated for quite some time over this and we felt the only way to manage this would be to arrest her.'

However, it became clear very quickly that she had nothing to do with the fire, which had the officers circle back to Mick.   Finally, the most crucial mistake committed by the couple, which secured their arrest and linked them directly to the crime scene, was the traces of petrol found on their clothes by forensic experts.  The fire had been lit by spreading a large quantity of petrol at the bottom of the stairs in the Philpott home.  Forensic expert Rebecca Jewell explained in the documentary that she was able to determine that the petrol found on the clothes of Mairead, Mick and their friend Paul Mosley was Shell petrol, the same petrol used in the arson.  Rebecca recounted testifying in court during Mick, Mairead and Paul's trial. She said: 'I didn't want to catch his eyes.  It was chilling. I've seen suspects obviously every time I've given evidence, but that does remain, in my mind, as one of the most chilling stares that a suspect has ever given me.'

Mick is currently serving a life sentence with a minimum of 50 years. 

The Philpotts' devious plan to frame an ex for killing their kids

The Philpotts married in 2003 and shared a cramped three-bedroom council house in Derby with his lover Lisa Willis and their children.  Philpott led his wife and accomplice Mosley into a scheme to get a bigger council house by burning down his home and framing Ms Willis for the crime after she walked out on him.  He also hoped to win back custody of his five children who had recently moved out of the home.  His intention was to rescue the sleeping children through an upstairs window but the plan went disastrously wrong after too much petrol was used and the fire burned out of control.  The blaze claimed the lives of Duwayne, 13, Jade, 10, John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six and Jayden, five.  Philpott, who had previously been jailed for stabbing his schoolgirl lover 27 times, wove a web of lies trying to get away with the crime and even plotted to 'get rich quick' off generous donations from the local community meant to pay for the funerals of his children.  In the days that followed the fire, Philpott began his elaborate ruse to appear blameless and even appeared at a press conference appealing for information.  During a fortnight of surveillance at the hotel where they were put up by police in May after the fire, the couple were heard whispering about the case, with Philpott recorded telling his wife to 'stick to your story'.

They were charged by police on May 30 in connection with the deaths and Mosley was arrested in the months afterwards, having told a friend the plan had been for him to rescue the children.  Police initially charged the trio with murder but downgraded this to manslaughter because while their actions were sickeningly reckless, the defendants had not intended to kill the six.  However, he was found guilty of the horrific crime at a trial in April and sentenced to life behind bars.  The judge described the plot as 'a wicked and dangerous plan' that was 'outside the comprehension of any right-thinking person'.

559

Articles / Pennsylvania woman is reunited with daughter she gave up for adoption 50 .....

« on: November 28, 2020, 03:41:29 PM »

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/27/grateful-erie-woman-reunited-daughter-50-years-adoption-thanksgiving/6431990002/

Pennsylvania woman is reunited with daughter she gave up for adoption 50 years ago
Valerie Myers   | Erie Times-News

ERIE, Pa. — Mary Beth DeSanto was watching an episode of "Long Lost Family" on March 5 while she cleaned her kitchen.

The TLC program about reunited families comforted her. DeSanto had given birth to a daughter who she gave up for adoption almost 50 years earlier. Unmarried and just 18 at the time, DeSanto, then Mary Beth Wolfe, did what she thought would be best for her baby.  But the decision haunted her.  "I loved watching 'Long Lost Family' because I knew at the end there would be a happy ending. But I knew it was something I never was going to have," DeSanto, now 68, said.

"That morning in March I was cleaning the kitchen and turned on 'Long Lost Family,' but I finished cleaning and shut it off before it was over," she said. "I didn't see the ending, but within half an hour the doorbell rang and my husband brought in a letter."

The letter from New York began:

"Hello Mary Beth,

'My name is Victoria Rich. This may not be the letter you’d expect to receive every day. I was born at the Our Lady of Victory Infant Home in Lackawanna, NY on August 20, 1970."

DeSanto's daughter had found her.  "I've often thought that I didn't see the happy ending on the show that day, but the letter was my happy ending," she said.

Mother and daughter were reunited at DeSanto's Millcreek Township home in August.  Their story was recorded for the online PBS series "American Portrait," about what it means to be an American today. Mother and daughter are featured in an episode of "Self-Evident," an 11-part series highlighting American Portrait stories.  "I couldn't ask for a better daughter. She grew up to be a remarkable woman. She's who I wish I would have been. She's intelligent, independent, persistent. She's not just a daughter but super-daughter. She's not only OK, she thrived," DeSanto said.

DeSanto has been "super welcoming," daughter Victoria Rich said.  "I'd had an idea of an ideal situation with my mother, and thought, oh, that's not going to happen. But it did," Rich said. "It was kind of ridiculous how positive and welcoming she was."

'The best and worst time of my life'

Mary Beth Wolfe was 17 when she realized she was pregnant. It was around Thanksgiving in 1969.  She graduated from Erie's former Academy High School on June 8, 1970, and the next morning was in the car with her parents and on her way to Our Lady of Victory Infant Home outside Buffalo, New York, where she would stay through her baby's birth.  "On one hand I just wanted it to be over and wanted to go back to life the way it was," DeSanto said. "But it would never be the way it was again.  At the same time, I didn't want it to be over; it was the only time I had with (my baby), just a few months. I wrote poems for her. I talked to her. I wrote letters to her. I knew our days were numbered," she said.

When her daughter was born that August and was placed in her lap, DeSanto changed her mind about giving her up for adoption.  "I called my parents and told them I would be bringing her home," DeSanto said.

"My poor parents. They were wonderful through the whole thing. Whatever I decided would be OK with them. They never pressured me one way or the other," she said.

DeSanto didn't sleep that night.  "I got a picture in my mind of adoptive parents picking her up and taking her home, and standing over her bassinet while she slept and thinking how lucky they were to have her," DeSanto said.

"Then I pictured what it would look like if I took her home, and me sitting in the dark rocking her and crying because I didn't know how to raise her. I was just a kid. I felt so overwhelmed. It was a chance I couldn't take," DeSanto said. "I didn't want to ruin her life as I had ruined mine.  When the day came, I walked out of there without her," she said.

'It would be like opening Pandora's box'

DeSanto came home and got a job at Erie Insurance.

"All I wanted to do was make up for what I had done, for my family. I wanted to get a job and be good again and not be the girl that did this," she said. "I guess I seemed kind of normal. Trying to be normal was the only way I could function. But it was like I was dead inside."

DeSanto met and married Randy DeSanto while she was working at Erie Insurance.  "I was so lucky. I met my husband, we had two sons, and we've been married 48 years. I have the kind of life I wanted, and yet there was always that sadness," especially on her daughter's birthdays, Mary Beth DeSanto said.

"Other things over the years also triggered it, and I was always shocked when the grief came out," DeSanto said.

DeSanto's husband knew about her daughter. She told her sons when they were young adults. Brian DeSanto is now 47. Perry DeSanto is 43.

Mary Beth DeSanto had decided not to look for her daughter.  "It would be like opening Pandora's box. I knew at the time that the decision I'd made was the best thing I could do for her. But after that I thought, what if she didn't have a good life? What if, because I gave her up, something bad had happened to her?" DeSanto said.

"I knew that would destroy me," she said.

'The caller ID said Erie, PA'

Victoria Rich, 50, of Brooklyn, New York, grew up in the New York metropolitan area.  Parents Joe and Terry Rich adopted a baby boy from the Our Lady of Victory Infant Home in 1967 and adopted Mary Beth Wolfe's baby daughter three years later.  "We always felt like a family," Rich said. "We had a lot of aunts and uncles and a lot of older cousins who talked about when our parents got us and how happy everyone was."

Joe and Terry Rich were in their 40s when they adopted their children. They had married at age 24 and had no children 17 years later.  "They both grew up in Brooklyn in Italian-American-Catholic families, and everyone else in their families was married and having kids in their early 20s," Rich said. "It's what they wanted, and it was really hard for them not to have kids. People would ask, 'Why can't she give you a child,' or 'Why can't he give you a child? What's wrong with you?'  It was really cruel," she said.

When the couple decided to adopt, their church, Our Lady of Victory, recommended Our Lady of Victory Infants Home in Lackawanna.  "They were unaffiliated, but there it was again. It's why they named me Victoria," Rich said.

Rich is a photography editor and video producer, has a master's degree in fine arts and also has worked in art education.  For years, she had never seriously looked for her birth mother.  "It's something that sort of was on the back burner," Rich said. "I'd always been curious but never really wanted to look."

Then she read "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade" by Ann Fessler.  "Most of the women expressed a lifetime of worry about their baby. They thought about their baby pretty much every day. I'd feel like an irresponsible person if I didn't try to alleviate that worry for whoever my mother should be," Rich said.

She did a DNA test without conclusive results and poked around on the internet. Then in 2019 New York state passed legislation granting adoptees access to their birth certificates. The law took effect Jan. 15.  "I applied, with a few thousand other people, that very first day the site opened," Rich said.

She got a copy of her birth certificate, with Mary Beth Wolfe's name on it, in early February. Friends helped her search the internet and find Mary Beth DeSanto.  Then the question became how to approach her. Rich drafted a carefully worded letter and enclosed some pictures of herself.  "I didn't know if this was a secret for her. If no one knew, I wrote the letter in such a way that if it got into anyone else's hands, they wouldn't know," Rich said. "And I didn't want to come across as a crazy grifter. I didn't go into too many details about my life. I didn't want to overshare. I wanted to sound like a normal person, which I am, and let her know I was open to any contact that she wanted."

Rich sent the letter via UPS on March 3 so that she could track it.  And then worried.  "You hear stories in different Facebook adoption groups. A lot of times the birth mother doesn't want to be found. I was trying to be prepared for any outcome," she said.

Rich was at work on March 5 with her phone face up on her desk when the call came.  "The caller ID said Erie, PA," she said. "I was trying to be cool, and she's like, 'Is this Victoria? It's Mary Beth. I received your letter.' Then she paused and I expected her to say, 'Please don't contact me ever again.' But she said a positive thing and I immediately knew that she wanted this, and that made it OK."

Mother and daughter began talking and texting, and then planning to meet. Rich was to be in western New York, not far from Erie, for a college graduation in May and a wedding in June.  "All of that was taken off the table because of the coronavirus, and in a way that ended up being kind of a good thing," Rich said. "We spent a lot of time talking and texting and getting to know each other.  My parents were about the same age as hers. Her family was Irish and German; ours was Italian. But there was a similar kind of cultural shorthand of being middle-class Catholic at that time. A lot of things she shared about her family feels really familiar to me," Rich said.

Rich drove to Erie to meet her birth mother and family just before her 50th birthday in August.  "Because of the virus, I hadn't been around people in a very long time. I felt kind of feral," she said.

And apprehensive.  "Mary Beth already felt familiar. But I still had this fear," she said. "What if it didn't work out? What if the rest of the family didn't like me?  But they're awesome. They're so nice and so welcoming and so open," Rich said.

And afterward, in a birthday card, one of DeSanto's sisters wrote, "This is the first Aug. 20 that I don't have to feel bad for Mary Beth and don't have to worry about what happened to you."

It was good to learn how close and supportive DeSanto's family has been.  "I think it would have been a lot harder for her if she didn't have that family," Rich said.

Victoria and Mary Beth continue to talk and text and get to know each other.  "If I had seen this in a movie, I wouldn't believe it and would roll my eyes. It's too corny. It wouldn't happen. But it did happen," Rich said.

560

Articles / Irish woman sold to the States for $10,000 from mother and baby home ....

« on: November 28, 2020, 03:03:19 PM »

https://www.irishpost.com/news/irish-woman-sold-to-the-states-for-10000-from-mother-and-baby-home-desperately-searches-for-long-lost-mother-149636?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=web

Irish woman sold to the States for $10,000 from mother and baby home desperately searches for long-lost mother

BY: Ryan Price
February 09, 2018

AN IRISH WOMAN who was sold to a US family as an infant from a mother and baby home is now making a desperate attempt to track down her mother before it’s too late.  Kathleen Sullivan, now 63 years old and living in Ohio, was born in 1954 in one of Ireland’s largest mother and baby homes, St Patrick’s on the Navan Road, Dublin.  She was adopted by a family in the US at 15 months old for a fee of $10,000 and was taken from the mother and baby home, despite having severe physical and emotional problems, and put on an Aer Lingus flight to the States.  Kathleen was one of eleven Irish children sold by the nuns who were on that flight to the US. Unbeknownst to the infant, it was a one-way journey.  Documents uncovered since reveal that prior to Kathleen being sold to her new parents, she underwent a series of examinations, which included an IQ test and doctor's reports regarding her physical appearance and the state of her mental health.  Now, Kathleen and her son Dennis McKenney are desperately trying to reunite the family and establish what happened to her mother.  So far, they have found out that Kathleen’s mother was named Mary Sullivan and was born February 15th, 1933 in Carlow. She may have gone by the name Maureen and is believed to have married a man with the surname Brennan.  Recently, Dennis had a breakthrough.  He got in touch with a woman named Clodagh Malone of Irish organisation Beyond Adoption. Dennis sent the documents his mother had kept over the many years and Clodagh promised him that she would find his family.  Clodagh went to the parish priest of Mary’s Carlow village. The priest was reluctant to give any information and insisted that he knew of nobody by the name of either Mary or Maureen Sullivan.  Clodagh went home and decided to search on her own. Eventually, after searching for people named Maureen and Mary O' Sullivan, she contacted a lady living in Carlow by the name of Maureen Sullivan, who turned out to Kathleen's first cousin.  Maureen told Clodagh that as far as her family was concerned, the last time anyone had seen or spoken to Kathleen's mother Mary was when she was living in Battersea, London in 1973.  Since then, there has been nothing.  Clodagh was able to put Maureen on the phone with Dennis, who described the call as ‘overwhelming’.  “Maureen told me that Mary was left with a broken heart after being forced to give her daughter (Kathleen) to the home," he said.

"She said that she always felt that she had ‘thrown her daughter away’. It was very emotional.  I then took the phone to my mother, who was speaking to her cousin for the first time.  It was incredible to watch. They immediately clicked. They were laughing together and Maureen was sharing details of what Mary looked like.”

After the phone call, Maureen sent images of some of her family members, including herself, to Dennis and Kathleen.  “I couldn’t believe the immediate resemblance,” Dennis said.

“Maureen looks so much like my mum, while Maureen’s son Jamie has an uncanny resemblance to my brother Kevin.  We had submitted a DNA test at that stage, but we were joking with each other that we didn’t need the results. The images were that powerful.”

The DNA results did come back and proved what Dennis suspected. Maureen was confirmed as his second cousin, making her Kathleen’s first cousin.  They were now reunited with their Irish family.  However, Kathleen is still yearning for closure with regards to her mother Mary, from whom she was taken at birth.  To this day, she is still left with severe physical and emotional problems from her time spent in the mother and baby home.  Kathleen’s childhood was marred by a lack of identity and an adopted family which Dennis described as “non-loving”.  She struggled for most of her life with her parent’s lack of love for her. On her father’s deathbed, Kathleen asked him if he ever really wanted her. He replied: “no I didn’t”.

While the search continues for Kathleen's mother, Dennis and Kathleen can take solace in the fact that they are now joined in their quest by their long-lost Irish family. Dennis revealed that he calls Maureen every week to chat about any progress and general family affairs and that alone is a success story in itself.

Anyone who may have information regarding this story can contact the author at ryan.price@irishpost.co.uk.

561

Articles / Britain's worst paedophile Richard Huckle scored each victim's abuse in ....

« on: November 25, 2020, 11:17:52 AM »

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-worst-paedophile-richard-huckle-23050534

Britain's worst paedophile Richard Huckle scored each victim's abuse in sick journal

WARNING: DISTURBING DETAILS Richard Huckle was serving 22 life sentences for his sick abuse of young and vulnerable children - he was found dead in his prison cell after fell inmate Paul Fitzgerald strangled him

By Jane Lavender Assistant Editor

10:44, 24 NOV 2020

Richard Huckle was serving 22 life sentences for his sick abuse of more than 200 children when he was found strangled to death in his prison cell.  The 33-year-old was attacked by fellow prisoner, Paul Fitzgerald, who strangled Huckle with a length of electrical wire before slamming a pen into his brain.  Fitzgerald later said he would liked to have cooked bits of Huckle's body, and would have gone on to kill other inmates but he was "having too much fun".

Jurors were told that Huckle was murdered in a "prolonged attack designed to humiliate and degrade him" at HMP Full Sutton, in East Yorkshire, on October 13, 2019.  Fitzgerald, 30, denied murder but has now been found guilty and said he wanted Huckle to feel what his victims had felt in the vicious attack which he said was "poetic justice".  Huckle had been jailed three years before his death after being found guilty of an unprecedented number of offences against children aged between six months and 12 years.  The freelance photographer, from Ashford in Kent, targeted vulnerable youngsters while volunteering in orphanages in Malaysia.  His campaign of terror against young and vulnerable children lasted for a horrifying nine years and when he was jailed a member of the public shouted "a thousand deaths is too good for you".

Huckle scored the scale of abuse that each victim suffered and from these sick notes, police believe he could have targeted up to 200 young victims.  Since his arrest police have only been able to find photographic evidence of the horrific abuse of 29 children - aged between six months and 12.  Huckle has refused to hand over the passwords for encrypted areas of his hard drive.  It was while he was working as an English teacher in South East Asia that Huckle started to target vulnerable and poverty-stricken children.  He had first visited Malaysia when he was just 19 and on a gap year and when police managed to crack into part of his hard drive, they found more than 20,000 abuse images on his laptop.  At his trial, Huckle insisted he had "no regrets" about moving to Malaysia and in a chilling letter to his solicitors blamed "external factors" for his horrifying abuse.  Huckle hit out at the "poor attitude to child welfare" and "the pathetic, perverted lust of those who lured me onto the dark net". 

At his trial, his barrister told the court Huckle had little sexual experience with adults because he “lacked confidence with women”.  It took more than an hour to read out each one of the sick 71 charges, which included rape, sexual assualt and sexual activity with a child.  Huckle forced some victims to pose with sick slogans advertising his foul images, which he sold for Bitcoins on the TLZ website on the dark web the encrypted version of the internet.  He even tried to make his paedophilia a full-time job by crowdfunding the release of his sick images.  Huckle targeted his victims by using his respected position as a teacher to gain access to the most vulnerable children in society.  Many of them were orphans and living in care and he even took one five-year-old out to celebrate her fifth birthday before molesting her at his home.  He also abused children while pretending to be taking them on a day trip from the children's homes they were living in.  In one part of his sick plan, Huckle planned to marry one of his young victims and set up his own foster home.  He wanted to create a "cycle of children" that would live in his home and then move on so he could turn his sick abuse into a full-time role.  Sick Huckle also created a paedophile manual, Paedophiles And Poverty: Child Lover Guide.  He was finally arrested in December 2014 when he flew home to the UK to spend Christmas with his family.  Huckle was brought into custody as part of a huge international operation into a website on the dark web but because he had no criminal record, the twisted abuser was initially released on bail.  His parents grilled him about the charges and at first Huckle insisted he was innocent.  When he finally confessed his guilt, his parents refused to let him into the family home and he was placed back in custody.  He pleaded guilty to 71 of the 91 charges and on June 6, 2016, was handed 22 life sentences.   Sentencing Huckle, Judge Peter Rook QC, told him: "Your offending behaviour became entrenched in your everyday life.  "Your life revolved around your sexual activities with young children. Your distorted beliefs in respect of children are deep-seated. Your self-delusion knows no bounds."  James Traynor, from the NCA’s child exploitation and online protection command, added: “Richard Huckle spent several years integrating himself into the community in which he lived, making himself a trusted figure.  "But he abused that trust in the worst possible way.  He deliberately travelled to a part of the world where he thought he could abuse vulnerable children without being caught.”

562

Articles / Adoption: The secrets, lies and myths

« on: November 16, 2020, 11:40:37 AM »

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-20278941.html

Adoption: The secrets, lies and myths

I don’t know a single natural mother who willingly gave up her baby, writes Claire McGettrick.
Sat, 09 Aug, 2014 - 01:00
Claire McGettrick

THOSE who speak of natural mothers wishing to forever ‘keep their secrets’ clearly have no grasp of adoption and its profound impact on those directly affected.  Ireland’s closed, secret, forced adoption system involved a complete separation of mother and child, where the break was permanent and neither would have knowledge of the other’s whereabouts. It offered no alternative to mothers but to relinquish their children.  For example, in 1967, a staggering 96.95% of all children born outside marriage were adopted.  Hidden from society, these women and girls were expected to get on with their lives as if they had never given birth or suffered the loss of a child.  Through my work with Adoption Rights Alliance (and its predecessor organisation Adoption Ireland) and Justice for Magdalenes Research, I have had the privilege of speaking with a large number of natural mothers.  Women who gave birth in the 1950s and 1960s speak of their children being taken from them by force.  Those from the 1970s say that despite an improvement in women’s rights, they simply had no choice due to financial and/or societal pressures.  Those from the 1980s describe their desperate attempts to keep their children, where instead of receiving advice, support and encouragement, they were coerced into relinquishing their babies by nuns and social workers who insisted that there was a ‘good family’ waiting to adopt the child.  In short, I do not know a single mother who willingly or easily gave up her baby.  When a mother loses a child in any circumstance other than adoption, she is supported by family, friends and community. She is allowed to grieve openly she is allowed to grieve.  In Ireland when a mother lost her baby to adoption, she was told to walk away and forget about her child: no counselling was offered and there was certainly no opportunity to grieve. It is what Kenneth Doka and later Evelyn Robinson (natural mother and author of Adoption and Loss the Hidden Grief) call ‘disenfranchised grief’.  Adoption brings with it a unique set of feelings that only those directly affected can understand. Because adopted people were infants at the time of separation, they do not consciously remember the loss. Thus, the effect is not always apparent to the uneducated eye, and for the adopted person at its most basic level, there is a sense that something is not quite right.  Adopted people know all too well that it is possible to miss something you have never had. More often than not, it takes speaking to other adopted people in order to be able to articulate those thoughts and feelings.  Conversely, natural mothers do remember their loss and most in Irish society have no concept of the impact of being forced to deny it.  In my experience, natural mothers will either completely suppress the pain or they will keep the wound open and the trauma remains in their conscious mind. Mothers who allow themselves to remember tend to talk more about their experiences and are generally those who will try to seek out their children, often approaching the adoption agency, who will (in all cases I have encountered) contact the adoptive parents of the (adult) adopted person instead of the adopted person themselves.  Those mothers who live in silence generally tell nobody about what happened to them. Sometimes when these mothers are approached about contact with their children, they will initially react badly to the request because it is such a shock to have those feelings of loss brought up again.  Adopted people by their nature will assume that it is their fault and conclude that they were not wanted, but this could not be further from the truth.  However, the refusal rarely lasts forever and we in Adoption Rights Alliance are always overjoyed to hear from adopted people who receive letters or phone calls from their natural mothers who had previously declined contact.  Sometimes all that was needed was time to process and think things through and most adopted people are sensitive to that and respect their mothers’ wishes. And, crucially, when natural mothers are offered an opportunity to speak to somebody who understands what they have been through (in most cases another mother) and they are given the space to express their feelings of loss, in our experience they will always change their minds.  The secrecy surrounding Irish adoption causes much pain and misunderstanding and the time for openness and truth is long overdue.   Those who wish to perpetuate the myth of the closeted natural mother ought to educate themselves before they speak, lest they hinder the work of those who seek to introduce some much-needed humanity into Irish adoption policy.

Claire McGettrick is co-founder of Adoption Rights Alliance and Justice for Magdalenes Research

563

Articles / The house of tears: Secret tapes of woman who spent years at controversial....

« on: November 13, 2020, 06:05:31 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3374922/The-house-tears-Secret-tapes-woman-spent-years-controversial-Irish-home-unmarried-mothers-reveals-unmarked-mass-grave-children.html?ito=facebook_share_article-top

The house of tears: Secret tapes of woman who spent years at controversial Irish home for unmarried mothers reveals there WAS an unmarked mass grave for up to 800 children

    Some 796 children died at a single Irish care home between 1925 and 1961
    It was feared children's bodies were buried in a mass grave at the site
    A worker at the home in Galway made a taped interview before her death
    That interview confirms the existence of a mass grave at the site in Tuam   

By Alison O'reilly For The Irish Mail On Sunday

Published: 22:07, 26 December 2015 | Updated: 09:55, 27 December 2015

A shocking recording from a woman who worked in an Irish home for unmarried mothers where almost 800 children died confirms there is an unmarked grave on the grounds of the infamous institution.  Julia Devaney entered St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County  Galway when she was nine years old and spent 36 years there until it closed in 1961. She worked as a domestic servant for the Bon Secours nuns.  Mrs Devaney gave a stark account of the home in a recorded interview with a former employer who ran a shop in Tuam some time in the 1980s. However, the tapes only resurfaced earlier this year.  From the 1920s, unmarried pregnant women in Ireland were routinely sent to institutions to have their babies, many of whom were sent to America for adoption.  Local historian Catherine Corless, who researched the names of the 796 children who died in the home from 1925 to 1961, has spent a number of months transcribing Ms Devaney’s interview.  Today, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal how Mrs Devaney said that children would ‘die like flies’ in the home. Mrs Devaney said: ‘Scores of children died under a year and whooping cough was epidemic. Sure they had a little graveyard of their own up there. It’s still there, it’s walled in now.  I don’t remember seeing any stillbirths. If the child died under a year, there were always inquiries. There wasn’t as much about it if the child was over a year.  Under a year old, the inspectors would put it down to neglect. They would look upon it as natural if the child was over a year because the child would be more open to diseases.'

The testimony of a woman who spent most of her life in the home adds crucial new evidence about the existence of the grave, and what the Bon Secours nuns and the council knew about the situation. Ms Devaney, who died around 20 years ago, was a respected member of the community in Tuam.  She was born in 1916 and as a baby she was placed in a ‘children’s home’ in Glenamaddy. She moved to the Tuam home in 1925, where she remained until it closed in 1961.  When the home closed, the nuns gave her a job in the gardens of the Grove Hospital, which they also owned, until she married John Devaney.  The couple lived out their days in Gilmartin Road, Tuam, and Mrs Devaney gave an interview to one of her gardening clients, who owned a shop in the town.  The MoS has published extensive extracts from her interview that reveal she believed the children were ‘never cared for’. Ms Devaney, who never had any children of her own, constantly refers to the orphans in the home and how it was apparent to her that they meant nothing to the nuns.  She said it was a ‘horrid place’, which was ‘cold, sad and loveless’: ‘It was not like a home, they’d be better off with a drunken father at home. It was an awful lonely old hole. Not natural, unnatural.  The children had a language all their own, they didn’t talk right at all, nobody to teach them, nobody to care. When the children came home from school they got their dinner and then their hair was fine-combed for nits and fleas.  They got tea, bread and butter and cocoa for their supper. The little ones went to bed summer and winter at 6pm.  They had swings and see-saws, but when I look back they were very unnatural children, shouting, screeching.  When the home closed and the children were all gone to Roscrea [Seán Ross Abbey] they were all taken away in vans and ambulances.’

She also describes how in the 1950s dozens of children were adopted to the US.  It’s understood many of these were illegal adoptions with families still trying to trace their loved ones because of the lack of proper paperwork.  Mrs Devaney described how one sister did not like the children going to the US: ‘Sister Leondra would say, “Why should we be rearing our Irish children for America?”’
 
The children living in the home didn't talk right. Nobody to teach them. Nobody to care

Last year the Irish Mail on Sunday’s shocking revelation of the Tuam Babies story went around the world and eventually led to a Commission of Inquiry into mother and baby homes.  But 30 years before the world learned of 796 babies lying in an unmarked grave in a small Galway town, one woman gave an astonishing interview to another local woman revealing details of her life inside its walls.  Julia Devaney, née Carter, was one of the last people to leave the Tuam home. She closed the gate behind her, bringing the curtain down on a horrifying religious-run institution that operated from 1925 to 1961.  The never-before-heard audio interviews have been unearthed by local historian Catherine Corless, whose invaluable research revealed the existence of the Tuam babies’ grave.  Julia’s account from beyond the grave is a shocking and moving chronicle of the inhumanity that pervaded the mother-and-baby homes.

The Children

Julia spoke about the loneliness the children experienced and how they received little or no attention. She reveals shocking details of horrifying neglect and sicknesses. The children had a language of their own and were constantly ‘wailing and crying’. Years after the home closed Julia believed she could still hear them when she visited the site.  ‘The Home children were like chickens in a coop, bedlam, screeching, shouting in the toddlers’ room. They never learned to speak properly, ’twas like they had a language all of their own, babbling sounds!’ 

‘The children had a language all their own, they didn’t talk right at all, nobody to teach them, nobody to care. When the children came home from school they got their dinner and then their hair was fine-combed for nits and fleas. They got tea, bread and butter and cocoa for their supper. The little ones went to bed summer and winter at 6pm.’

‘The nuns were very regimental with the children, doing drills and ring-a-ring-a-rosy with them.  They made no effort to develop their minds. The mothers were told to feed them and clean up after them and put them on the pots. I think they spent most of their time sitting on the pots.’

‘The children were so mischievous that they would throw the pots and blankets out the window just for something to do.  Boys left the Home at five years of age and the girls at seven years.  I always noticed that the children were awful small for their age. Always undersized children.  Some of the children wouldn’t use spoons, but use their fists to lift the porridge out of the mugs, and they would get a whack.’

‘There were never any toys or books, never any effort to teach them anything. I’m sure a lot of them are in mental homes now…’

‘Nobody loved the children.... The children would be trying to get up on your knees and trying to love you, looking for affection.  They were very backward, everyone they saw on the road was “daddy” and “mammy”, because they would hear other children in school talking about their mammy and daddy.’

‘I have terrible regrets for the children, I feel a sense of shame that I did not create a war, but then again what could I have done?’

‘It makes me lonely when I walk up to the Home site now, I think I can still hear the Home children shouting and laughing.’

The nuns

There were more than 20 nuns in the home while Julia was there. She gives detailed insight into how they made their own rules and bizarrely gave a girl called ‘Bina Rabbitte’ a lot of control. Her name was used on every Birth, Baptism and Death Cert, as ‘Assistant Matron’ when she was just a domestic. Julia remembers every nun – some exceptionally kind, others were ‘devils’.

The Good

‘Mother Hortense.  She was a big hefty woman, a slave driver with a heart of gold. She was friendly, but still she put those poor girls into Ballinasloe and the Magdalene laundry!’

‘Sister Priscilla was childlike.  There was a lovely old nun in the home long ago, a Sr Priscilla and I would canonise her, she hadn’t much to do with the children, she was old but worked with the chapel and the convent side of it. But she was the essence of kindness to everybody.’

‘Sister Anthony would say to the women, “Don’t be crying, wouldn’t it be worse if it was a bad marriage?” Sister Gabriel, in charge of the babies, was always praying.’

‘Sister Patrick was a lovely nun, she was elderly, she would walk down the garden to me as she said she hated being above in “that place”, and she would always be telling me her love stories. She was natural… the only nun who ever spoke to me about life as an equal.’

‘There was a beautiful nun, Sister John Baptist, she was magnificent, and they sent her up to the children’s home to try her vocation, and by God she left it. She left the convent!’

‘Sister Celestine was a bit peculiar, whatever thing she had about clean clothes, she used to change her clothes on a Saturday night, and take all she took off her and burned them in the furnace.  She was daft. She started the 1p dinners in Dublin. A little red-faced woman. Sister Celestine was red faced from washing herself.’

‘One nun in the home, Mother Ann was the most beautiful person she wouldn’t see a hole in a ladder. She ruled by gentleness, she’d do with love what Martha did with an iron rod. She was the nun that closed the door in the home in 1961.’

‘Sister Leondra did not like the idea at all of the children going to the USA. “Why should we be rearing our Irish children for America,” she used say … Then there was old Sister Leondra from Belfast who was sent to Tuam, and her sister, Sister Camilus who was sent from Cork to Tuam. They were probably sent here to die together, and are buried in the Grove grounds now.’

The Bad

‘Mother Martha … She ruled us with an iron hand. She had a set on us women that grew up in the home under Mother Hortense. She’d keep you down. On a wet day when I couldn’t go out on the land, I might go inside and maybe do a bit of crochet, and my heart would be in my mouth for fear Martha would walk in.’

‘Martha… life wasn’t worth living with her.… You couldn’t argue with her, she would give you a thump to put you into the middle of next week!

The Women

The women who were unfortunate enough to end up in the Tuam home were often left shocked by their experiences while a number of them were committed to Ballinasloe psychiatric hospital. They became increasingly frustrated and devastated, and often took their anger out on the children by beating them. Julia recalls their daily routines and how she befriended a number of women.

‘The women had to have an admission ticket from the doctor to get in. There was no such thing as being signed in, but once they were there they would have to wait a year to look after their baby. One girl escaped, went out, but she was brought back again that night by the guards.’

‘Breakfast consisted of porridge, milk, tea and bread – trays of bread. Then down to feed the babies.

Children went to Mass, too. The children got porridge, milk, bread and tea before school.

Mothers then fed their babies, they were barged into breastfeeding. If the babies weren’t breastfed, bottles would have to be made up and sterilised. She’d [Reverend Mother] nearly starve the infant to make the mother breastfeed. The doctor had to certify that the mother could not breastfeed before bottles were given.’

‘The mothers used to belt the hell out of the little children and they could be heard screaming by passers-by on the Athenry Road. Probably mothers frustrated and taking it out on the other children.’

‘None of the women ever attempted suicide. They had a very hard life, there was no consolation, no advice, no love there for them. They just got through, counting the days and weeks until they were free to go. The parents would come back to the home to bring the woman out after her term of a year was up, whether it was to put them on the train or what, and the nuns would get a job for anyone else who had no one to meet them.

Sometimes people from Tuam would come up looking for a servant girl.’

‘The mothers would never tell me anything. They were afraid of the nuns and they were suspicious of us, even though I would be nice to them. They were always talking amongst themselves. The garden wasn’t hard for me for I loved it, but the girls were unhappy at it. It was an unhappy ould place, that’s what it was now. The girls found no interest there, they were just putting in the day.’

Julia

As the last resident to leave the Tuam home after the children and mothers were shipped out to Seán Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Julia has given a stark account of her life there. Her interview is laden with the impact the home had on her as a person. She explains how she always felt inferior to everyone else, and was excluded in class when other pupils were asked what they did for their summer holidays.

Her only avenue of escape from the home was when widower John Devaney – a County Council worker who had done jobs at the home – asked her to marry him. She accepted his proposal.

‘I never thought about not having parents … Parents didn’t enter the head of the children because you never miss what you didn’t have. You would know you had no one and just get content with that.

‘I wasn’t bright in school because you were made stupid from the environment you were reared in.’

‘I always had an inferiority complex, I’d be thinking I shouldn’t get the same as everybody else.

If I was at the Post Office, honest to God, I’d let another in before me, even to this day and I an ould hag!

I’d even think the priests would know, and they would just shun me on account of that. I think the children who were fostered out fared better.’

‘The nuns never taught us the facts of life, I don’t know did they even know themselves. It was only in later years that the Bon Secours Sisters were allowed to do maternity. We were not told about periods, they did not even give us a sanitary towel or a bra or anything.

When I got my first period, I used to be hiding it, I used ould cloths and rags, there was plenty of them around. I had learned what to do from the women.’

‘John Devaney started chatting to us, and then he told me his wife Delia had died three years ago and that he had a fine empty house, and that he would take me out of there if I would marry him!

He then asked me if I would go to the pictures with him on Sunday night, and I said I would go the following Sunday night.

So he said okay and then said he would go and get a packet of sweets for me. [We put] dish cloths in our mouths to stop us laughing so the nuns wouldn’t hear us.’

‘[A domestic servant] Bina was in charge with a bunch of keys, you wouldn’t dare go out that gate. You were conditioned that there was no other life but this. We would never, never, never be let out to a dance.

[Named woman] might invite us to a film at the cinema and we might be let out to that. We never questioned it, we were conditioned.’
'The nuns took a house down by the sea in Achill every summer for a month or six weeks.

We would take it in turns to spend a week with them. [Named woman], the nuns’ cook, and myself, and [named woman] and the other domestics.

A yearly treat. It never dawned on us that the nuns were wronging us and that we were entitled to our own lives.

It was later when new nuns came to the home that they asked questions and why us grown women were still in the home.’

The Home

In the interview, Julia spoke often about the home, how it looked, felt and smelt, as well as about those who came through it during its 40-year existence. She claimed that around 2,000 women passed through the home and gives clear descriptions of many of those unfortunate unmarried mothers. As Julia puts it, there were three kinds of people in the home: ‘Us, them and the nuns,’ referring to children, mothers and the nuns.

‘It was a cold, sad, loveless place, not like a home, they’d be better off with a drunken father at home.

It was an awful lonely ould hole. Not natural. Unnatural. ’

‘They knew well that the home was a queer place, ’twas a rotten place. The poorest downcast family were better off than being in the home – there’s love in the family home even though there’s poverty.’

‘There was approximately 50 women at a time in the home. The place was spotless, a show case like the Botanical Gardens. All the women spent each Saturday sweeping the yards. The women did as they were told, most of them gave no trouble, the ones that did give trouble were sent to Ballinasloe mental hospital, St Brigid’s. Some women would get into fights with others, they were so frustrated. The doctor had to certify for women to be sent to St Brigid’s. The doctor would do what the nuns told him, without question. That’s how the row was settled!’

‘The home was the worst institution as regards human rights!’

‘It was like a secret society in the home. You were content ’cos you knew no better. We were allowed to go out and vote, we were told who to vote for. We were told to vote for Fianna Fáil, of course. We never rebelled, we had no mind of our own. You did what you were told.’

A house of tears, a house of sorrows

Recreation

Despite being a home for unmarried mothers and their children, there were no toys in the building. The children played ring-a-ring-a-rosy but never had one-to-one attention – the nuns often forgot who they were. The mothers sang or played cards, music was a thrill for them because they had no experience of the outside world and those who did go to school, were mostly ignored by the teachers there.

‘In St Brigid’s hall in the home, they used to have a melodeon and the women would chat and laugh and play cards – a drug to help them forget!

On bonfire night they would listen to music coming in from Tubberjarlath Road. I remember [named woman], a lovely girl. Wooden Heart was a song out at the time, and she would stretch her neck out the window to hear it.’

‘They used to have plays at Christmas time … We had great plays. There was a stage, like, down in the town hall. The Grandfather Clock was one of the plays we did. The doctor’s family would come up to see it, and [named woman] [whose] father came from the same place in Co. Clare as Mother Hortense.’

‘I remember a blessed statue out where they were playing. There were swings and a see-saw. Then there was a turf shed and the bottom of the door was broken, and the children used to gather up bits of turf and fling them at the statue.’

‘There was an elderly woman in her forties who had a baby, she had a grey head.

She was a great violinist and could dance as well … Her music brought happiness to the children.

‘They had swings and see-saws, but when I look back they were very unnatural children – shouting screeching sometimes laughing Ring-a-ring-a-rosy.’

Deaths

While there has been much debate regarding the Tuam grave and whether or not the children are actually buried there, Julia – a former resident who was the last person to leave the home – describes the grave in great detail and how ‘it’s still there’ except it’s ‘walled in now’.

Our story in the MoS in May 2014 revealed how 796 children were potentially buried at the home after burial records could not be found for each and every child.

‘Children died of measles, there were no antibiotics. Dr Costelloe was a very old doctor, scores of the children died under a year and whooping cough was epidemic, they used to die like flies.

Sure they had a little graveyard of their own up there. It’s still there, it’s walled in now.’

‘Some of the mother’s didn’t like their own child, you would have to watch them, maybe they wouldn’t give the child the bottle at all.’

‘I don’t remember seeing any stillbirths. If the child died under a year there were always enquiries.

There wasn’t as much about it if the child was over a year.

Under a year old, the inspectors would put it down to neglect.

They would look upon it as natural if the child was over a year because the child would be more open to diseases.’

‘A [named mother] girl took it to heart terrible that she was placed in the home. She had no energy and stayed in bed for six months and kept a glass of milk beside her bed. She was so lonely. When her child was born she was there waiting, waiting for family to call.

She died when the baby was six days old. She died of a broken heart. When she died her family came in for her. The nuns told the family that they should have kept contact while she was alive.

Twas nearly the closing of the home.’

The Locals

They were known as ‘home girls’. Julia remembers how the locals would threaten their own children with putting them into the home if they misbehaved. She also knew that the shock of living in the outside world would be enough to leave some residents in a psychiatric home.

‘I always felt that the outside world had an edge on us, that they looked down on us. You’d feel you couldn’t cope with the outside world … Families outside used the home as a threat on their children, that if they didn’t behave, they would be sent there.

‘The nuns would tell us not to be talking to local people in case they would be asking questions about the home. We were totally cut off from the outside world.’

‘I was never asked to any of the schoolgirl’s houses, we were always looked down on. I still feel that people look down their noses at me. I wouldn’t like the Gilmartin Road people [where Julia came to live] to know I came from the home, I wouldn’t like it.’

‘I don’t remember the town’s people coming in to give birth. If they did, we would not see them. They might be “spotted” all right. Their people wouldn’t go in, because it would be too conspicuous and even if they were seen going up the Dublin Road, ’twas enough to say they were in it...’

‘… she heard the two of them saying, “that’s a home wan.” Now, they must have heard it from their parents – “that’s a home baby” – that’s what they said. And she felt awful sensitive about it. That’s what they used to call us, not in my time, but later – “the home babies” – no matter what age you were. We were never invited to anyone’s house.’

The Men

Men on the outside rarely spoke to the women once they went into the home. However, Julia explains that the workmen or delivery men would be friendly to the girls and often asked for their hand in marriage – an escape for many of the women. The men did not take their babies though.

‘The mothers spoke only to each other about the fathers of their children. They’d hate to face home. The lads that were friendly with them outside would ignore them now. Many a girl shed tears – a terrible depressing place.…An odd fella would come in and take the girl out and marry them. I remember one case where the parents and the priest and the fella came in and said he would marry the girl. He went down on his knees but he would not take the child as it was not his.’

‘[Named woman] was a very pretty girl when she was young, and when we were brought down to the Corpus Christi procession, there was a man, he was a clerk, and he fell in love with [her] and she used to steal down to the gate at the home to see him … [Named woman] was about 21 and if they had been left alone, that man would have married [named woman]. … It broke [named woman’s] heart.’

‘John [Julia’s husband]… was an ould man but he was kind. I thought I had stepped into heaven when I first went into the house. Everything looked so small, the kettle and pots, I was used to big saucepans and huge tea pots. John bought the messages as I had no idea how to use money and he also did the cooking as I never learned to do that. I was totally institutionalised.’

The Work

The work carried out by the women was ‘tough and endless’. While Julia said she took to the garden in order to keep her sanity, the other women all had their own jobs digging land, cleaning, cooking and ironing. They were not paid. Money was allegedly put into the post office for them – which they never saw.

‘… The mothers went to the laundry to wash the babies’ nappies … a big bath of cold water for dirty nappies. Each mother had to account for their own nappy …

They’d each go to their jobs after that... go out on the land digging, or the kitchen, scullery, dining room, children’s dormitory.

Polish and wash and clean, make the beds, monotonous work.’

‘In the morning they would take the “mackintoshes” off the beds, clean and dry them by hanging them on the old iron stairs.

Then at 5pm they would put them back on the beds. The children would be taken out at night to the toilets but if they were taking them out forever, they would still be pissing the beds. The smell of ammonia was all over the place!’

‘I dug the garden in winter for it to be ready for March. We dug with spades and shovels for drills.

Six girls helped out with the digging. The women were listless, they had no interest in the work they did in the home. They were told they were there for penance, and they knew there was no way out.

They knew they had to hide from the outside world, they were not wanted out there.’

‘It was more like a prison climate there, there was never a feeling of nurse/patient attitude.

About 2,000 women passed through the home in its lifetime.’

‘I was out on the land, it wasn’t as monotonous as inside. We had chickens, pigs, and I cleaned out the sheds and spread the manure on the land.

I cleaned out the glasshouses and put in fresh clay.

We had a little ass and cart bringing out a pile of manure to the different gardens.’

‘The dormitory floors were done with beeswax blocks.

The children’s play area had to be scrubbed each day.

It was a big long room with toddlers and the smell of urine would come from the wooden floors. I had nothing to do with the children. Supper was at 7pm and the women were free after that.’

The Magdalene Laundries

The Magdalene Laundries were institutions, generally run by Catholic religious organisations that operated for more than 200 years from the 18th century to the late 20th Century. In Ireland the first was founded in Dublin in 1765 and the last closed in 1996. They were established to house unmarried mothers. An estimated 30,000 women were confined in these institutions in Ireland.

Julia describes them – along with mental institutions – as the ultimate punishment for women in the homes.

‘None of the mothers would kick up, because if they did, then they knew they would be put into the Magdalene, they’d be punished. It’s a place you wouldn’t want to make too much talk about your child, it’s a place you’d want to be very careful of what you’d say or you would pay for it. … If children came back from being fostered out, and if they were a bit slow, they would be sent into the Magdalene Laundry as well.

I know of four that were sent in, they are there yet. If women had two children, they were sent to the Magdalene Laundry. If they were wild outside, the priest would send them into the laundry. Most of them were country girls who might get into trouble working for big farmers.’

‘It wasn’t only mothers who were sent to the Laundry. Say children who were sent out into the world and they weren’t a success, they would be sent to the Laundry instead of trying to make something of them. That’s what they’d do.’

‘I know of three of them [children from the home] who came back with illegitimate children themselves, and I don’t think that they ever got out again.

They were put into the Magdalene Laundry. I visited the Magdalene Laundry once to see some former residents, and a nun came in and she addressed everyone as “Maggie” – they didn’t even have their own names any more. In later years the Magdalene Laundries were closing because the townspeople were opening their own laundries and St Mary’s was running out of penitents. The women I visited were very institutionalised and were praying like the nuns.’

The Interviewer

The interviewer Rebecca Millane, also known as ‘Rabbi’ is from Tuam and ran a shop in High Street. Julia was employed to do some work for Rebecca and between them they decided to do an interview.

However the interview was never broadcast or published until now. It was only through local historian Catherine Corless’s tireless work highlighting the plight of the Tuam babies that the tapes have surfaced. At a time when people feared and obeyed the Church, Rebecca was not afraid to ask the question why these children were discarded and treated so badly by people who claimed to be followers of Christ. Julia’s response lays bare the legacy of the Tuam home.

‘Well, they weren’t Christ-like that’s sure. There was not justice to the children – not at all! They were left to fend for themselves – at five years of age. They walked up that front path with a nurse to the ambulance with all their worldly possessions, with a pair of heavy booteens and socks and a new coat and a change of clothes, and that was their worldly possessions going out into the world and we’d never see or hear of them again.

I used to feel so sorry for the little child when the mother went out into the world.

They were like chickens in a coop, all reared in a batch.

I don’t know how they adjusted at all to the world.

Oh it was an awful place altogether to be for any child. I’d say it left a mark on them for life.’

564

General Discussion / Tear-jerking DIY SOS project and the heartbreaking reality behind emotional....

« on: November 13, 2020, 11:24:59 AM »

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/tear-jerking-diy-sos-project-22995646?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Mirror12at27&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&ccid=2369561

Tear-jerking DIY SOS project and the heartbreaking reality behind emotional show

EXCLUSIVE: Nick Knowles and the team are back tonight for an emotional Children In Need special of DIY SOS to help a former Daily Mirror Pride of Britain winner

By Sara Wallis

06:58, 12 NOV 2020Updated07:13, 12 NOV 2020

Fearless Lara Evans never dreamed she could surf but just look at her now. The 19-year-old wheelchair user, who has cerebral palsy, has the time of her life as she rides the waves on a specially adapted board.  She is one of hundreds of youngsters enjoying an adventure on the sea thanks to the efforts of Ben Clifford and his inspirational surf school Surfability UK.  Based in Caswell Bay, near Swansea, Ben’s brainchild is a world-leading, fully inclusive surf school that helps children with even the most severe disabilities take part in the sport he loves.  Lara of Flintshire says: “People try to wrap me in cotton wool and I don’t like it. It feels like I’m being trapped. It’s nice to take a risk and I love the feel of the waves. It’s something I thought wasn’t possible and it’s opened my eyes into something I’d love to continue to do.”

Lara’s dad Nigel says: “It gave me goosebumps to see how happy Lara was doing something she wouldn’t normally do. It just filled me with joy.”

Surfability UK, which receives funding from BBC Children In Need, is the focus of an emotive charity special episode of DIY SOS, on BBC1 tonight.

It shows smiling kids surfing on the adapted boards as their proud parents watch from the beach with tears of joy.  One beaming mum says: “My most precious thing in the world is out there on a surfboard. We never thought anything like this would ever happen.  He wasn’t supposed to walk. He wasn’t supposed to talk. It’s just overwhelming pride.”

Zipping across the waves, one little boy says: “It feels like I’m flying!”

The DIY SOS project came about after Ben met host Nick Knowles at last year’s Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain after he won a Community Partner award.  At the time, Surfability was based in a tiny, ramshackle, flooded old bus shelter.  It meant kids with additional needs had to change in car parks and use sodden equipment stored in a damp room that Ben calls the “flooded cave”.  After hearing of their plight, Nick told producers this was a charity in need. In tonight’s episode Nick and his team transform the shelter into an eco-friendly, state-of-the-art surfboard-shaped centre.  Ben, 35, says: “We had no facilities. When we started in 2013 we worked out of a car or a van, then finally had an out-of-use bus shelter.  We had to constantly bail out water from the flooding. There were no lights. Wetsuits were likely to stay wet because we had no heating or ventilation.  Parents had to bring their own tables to change their children. It’s been really tough. Sometimes you do feel like giving up, you have low moments, but we carried on.”

Ben, who lives on the Gower Peninsula with wife Nina and children Kaliopi, five, Casson, three, and one-year-old Didier, was inspired to set up the school after volunteering over a decade ago at a one-off surf camp for kids with autism.  He says: “I selfishly volunteered because I thought it would be a nice weekend in Devon. I wasn’t prepared for the impact it would have on me.  It was incredible. I just thought what a shame this was a one-off event and not something that happens all the time. It all grew from there. We now help around 500 kids.”

Ben has battled dyspraxia, which affects balance and coordination, and knows all too well the need to overcome challenges and his mantra is inclusion for everyone.  He says: “I love taking risks. Everyone should have the opportunity to expand themselves and push their limits. This allows them to try something new, to get radical, to go and ride a wave and have that feeling of adrenaline, that excitement.”

Seven-year-old Jeremiah certainly feels that excitement as he charges into the sea at full pelt and leaps onto a surfboard, laughing that his mum is “screaming her head off”.

The little surf dude was born with three missing limbs and has only his right arm – but it clearly does not slow him down. Asked if he is frightened of falling off, he says: “I’m not a baby!”

Mum Caroline says: “Most of Jeremiah’s life, people try to fuss him and protect him. This is a chance when he gets to push himself and do actual sport. He loves it.”

Nine-year-old Rowan takes to the water in another heart-swelling moment. Rowan of Harrogate, North Yorks, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour at 10 weeks old.

Proud mum Kerry says: “It’s hard to find fun activities that give the thrill factor and support. Surfability put a previously inaccessible sport something easily in reach and Rowan had an amazing time and learnt a new skill. Seeing his beaming smiles and his pride in his achievement was incredibly special.”

Brave Rowan says: “I like taking risks. It feels exciting. Surfing is great fun.”

Ben says it is these daily “wow” moments that make his job extra special, despite the challenges. We have a lot of parents in tears on the shore,” he says. “Sometimes the public stop and watch and get emotional too.  Amazing moments are normal for us. I had a visually impaired student catch a wave on her own. We’ve had countless parents seeing their kids experiencing the sea for the first time, amazed that their child is achieving so much.  “Parents and surfers put a lot of trust in us. Imagine being a quadriplegic non-swimmer and being willing to let me take them on a surfboard.  I had one mum who brought her son every week and it was four years before he would participate he inched closer and closer, and now he surfs.  That patience and not giving up on your child is just so lovely to see.”

Raised in inner-city Bristol, Ben attended a failing school that struggled to support his needs for his dyspraxia.  But determined Ben learnt to juggle and improved his balance by walking along tree branches.  He says: “My school was so violent and had a resident police officer. There were a lot of jaded staff who didn’t care and didn’t have the time to help me.  Luckily my parents were into the outdoors and we had lots of beach holidays and I was just fascinated by surfing from a young age.”

Now he is a world leader in teaching adaptive methods and safety techniques, and manager of the Welsh Parasurfing team, which recently competed at the World Championships in California, US.  His vision for inclusivity has been boosted by a Children In Need grant of £120,000 over three years, which helps them deliver surf-based activities, as well as the DIY SOS build.  Nick says: “It really does show what can happen if people pull together and work together and believe in each other.”

Ben adds: “This is a dream come true. It’s going to help so many people. I don’t think that inclusion should be an exceptional thing. Here, everyone can be safe and dignified and smash their barriers.”

565

General Discussion / Tragedy of Queen's secret cousins

« on: November 11, 2020, 07:57:10 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8936971/The-Crown-tells-tragic-story-Queens-cousins-locked-asylum-registered-DEAD.html

Tragedy of Queen's secret cousins: The Crown will tell the story of Queen Mother's nieces with severe learning disabilities who were locked in an asylum and neglected after being registered as DEAD

    Fourth series of Netflix historical drama released this weekend on November 15
    Episodes feature Queen Elizabeth II's cousins Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon
    Drama reveals they were incarcerated in the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in Redhill, Surrey due to their severe learning disabilities
    Helena Bonham Carter's Princess Margaret rages when she discovers plight

By Hayley Richardson For Mailonline

Published: 11:07, 11 November 2020 | Updated: 15:43, 11 November 2020

The new series of The Crown will tell the tragic story of the Queen's 'hidden' cousins who were locked up in an asylum and registered as dead after being born with severe learning difficulties.  The Netflix drama returns to our screens this weekend and offers its take on the shameful scandal that saw sisters Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon the Queen Mother's nieces neglected and forgotten about for decades.  At the ages of 15 and 22 respectively, the pair, who were unable to speak due to their condition, were secretly placed in the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in Redhill, Surrey by their parents in 1941.  They remained at the institution, cruelly dubbed The National Asylum for Idiots, for the majority of their lives and, according to reports, were barely ever visited and registered as dead.   Although the Queen Mother knew the statement in Burke's Peerage that both women were deceased (published after false information had been supplied by their mother) was untrue, she never visited either of them, and apparently saw no contradiction in her patronage of Mencap, which campaigns against families placing their mentally challenged relations in state care.  Nerissa passed away aged 66 in 1986 and Katherine died six years ago aged 87.  In a new episode of The Crown, which is set in the Eighties, the pair are seen in their sixties adoringly watching their cousin Queen Elizabeth II arrive at the Royal Variety Performance on TV.   Cuddling dolls, they stand for the national anthem and salute before being handed medication by a nurse.  It's perhaps unsurprising that it's Helena Bonham Carter's character, feisty Princess Margaret, who passionately expresses her disgust at their harrowing treatment.  Flying into a rage at the Queen Mother (played by Marion Bailey), she cries: 'Locked up and neglected. They're your nieces daughters of your favourite brother.  It's wicked and it's cold-hearted and it's cruel and it's entirely in keeping with the ruthlessness which I myself have experienced in this family.  If you're not first in line, if you're an individual character with individual needs or, God forbid, an irregular temperament then you'll be spat out, or you'll be hidden away or worse: Declared dead. Darwin had nothing on you lot shame on all of you.'

The Crown does appear to use artistic licence in its fictional retelling of the saga as it implies the Queen Mother was involved from the start.  However, a newspaper claimed in 1996 that she was unaware of their existence until 1982, when she received a letter from the institution's league of friends.  Afterwards she reportedly sent a four-figure sum to fund Christmas and birthday presents for the pair but there is no evidence the royals visited them.  The Netflix drama also suggests the Queen swallowed the line that the sisters were dead. It's not clear when she discovered the truth, but following a Channel 4 documentary in 2012 she was upset by suggestions they'd been abandoned.  It's also unknown whether Princess Margaret found out about her cousins and confronted her mother; it's certainly unlikely she was told of their plight by her therapist, as is the case in The Crown.   Nerissa was born in 1919, and Katherine in 1926. Their father was John Bowes-Lyon, one of the Queen Mother’s older brothers and a son of the Earl of Strathmore. John died in 1930 and was survived, until 1966, by the girls’ mother, Fenella.  The sisters were unfortunate to have been born in an era when mental disability was seen as a threat to society and linked to promiscuity, feckless breeding and petty crime, the characteristics of the underclass; associations encouraged by popular belief in the science of eugenics, soon to be embraced by the Nazis.  For the Bowes-Lyons, this was a stigma that could threaten their social standing and taint the marital prospects of their other children. Nerissa and Katherine’s beautiful and healthy sister Anne became a princess of Denmark by her second marriage; by her first marriage, she was Viscountess Anson and mother of the society photographer, the late Lord Lichfield.  Their admission to the asylum was also deemed necessary when, in 1923, their aunt Elizabeth married the future King George VI.  The shocking story of their incarceration came to light shortly after Nerissa's death, when journalists discovered she was buried in a grave marked only by a plastic name-tag and a serial number.  The ensuing scandal, which prompted an anonymous source to provide a gravestone for Nerissa, made little difference to her sister’s life.  Katherine received no visitors at the asylum, and as her aunt, the Queen Mother, lived on into cosseted old age, she did not possess even her own underwear at least until her final years there and had to dress from a communal wardrobe.  In The Crown the Queen Mother attempts to defend the cruel steps, telling Princess Margaret: 'I went from being the wife of the Duke of York, leading a relatively normal life, to being Queen.  At the same time my family, the Bowes-Lyons, went from being minor Scottish aristocrats to having a direct bloodline to the crown, resulting in the children of my brother paying a terrible price.  Their illness, their imbecility their professionally diagnosed idiocy and imbecility would make people question the integrity of the bloodline.  Can you imagine the headlines if it were to get out? The idea that one family alone has the automatic birthright to the crown is already so hard to justify, the gene pool of that family better have 100 per cent purity.  There have been enough examples on the Windsor side alone to worry people if you add the Bowes-Lyon illnesses to that, the danger is it becomes untenable.'

It's thought the sisters' symptoms were due to a genetic condition from their mother's bloodline, not that of the Bowes-Lyon.  Katherine and Nerissa had three cousins in The Royal Earlswood Edonea, Rosemary and Etheldreday, the daughters of Fenella's sister Harriet who shared their disabilities.  When Charles and Diana wed in July 1981, Katherine and Nerissa are said to have watched the ceremony excitedly on TV.  Years later Onelle Braithwaite, one of the nurses who cared for them, remarked: 'I remember pondering with my colleague how, if things had been different, they would surely have been guests at the wedding.'

Speaking in the Channel 4 documentary, she added: 'Today they’d probably be given speech therapy and they’d communicate much better.  They understood more than you'd think. It was so sad. Just think of the life they might have had. They were two lovely sisters.'

The Royal Earlswood was closed in 1997; at least one former nurse has alleged patients were abused.   The grandiose building has since been converted into luxury apartments.   

History of the Royal Earlswood Hospital in Surrey

The Royal Earlswood Hospital, formerly The Asylum for Idiots and The Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives, in Redhill, Surrey, was the first establishment to cater specifically for people with developmental disabilities. Previously they had been housed either in asylums for the mentally ill or in workhouses.  Ann Serena Plumbe took an interest in the plight of the learning disabled, or 'idiots' as they were termed at the time, and began to discuss what could be done to assist them in 1847.  In discussion with Dr John Conolly (of the Hanwell Asylum) and Rev Dr Andrew Reed (a philanthropist and founder of several orphanages) they determined to educate such people.  A building known as Park House, in Highgate, was bought in March 1848 and its first patients were admitted the following month, but it soon became too small and a purpose-built facility was commissioned, with Queen Victoria donating 250 guineas in the name of the Prince of Wales, who became a life member.  The hospital was designed by William Bonython Moffat and built by John Jay, with Prince Albert taking a special interest and laying its foundation stone in June 1853, opening it two years later.  It was given a Royal charter in 1862 and renamed The Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in June 1926.  John Langdon Down (after whom Down's syndrome was named) was medical superintendent of the hospital from 1855 to 1868.  The hospital joined the National Health Service in 1948 but went into a period of decline following the introduction of Care in the Community and closed in March 1997.  The site was redeveloped for residential use and is now known as Royal Earlswood Park.

Who was John Bowes-Lyon the Queen's uncle?

John Bowes-Lyon was the second son of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne. His sister Elizabeth later become Queen Elizabeth.  He was educated at Eton and Oxford University, and worked as a stockbroker in the City of London for the firm Rowe and Pitman before the outbreak of WWI. He married Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, the younger daughter of 21st Baron Clinton in September 1914.  The couple had five children; their firstborn, Patricia Bowes-Lyon, died in infancy. They went on to have Anne, Nerissa, Diana and Katherine. Anne married Lt.-Col. Thomas William Arnold Anson, Viscount Anson in 1938 but the couple divorced in 1948 after having two children. She remarried Prince George Valdemar of Denmark in September 1950.  Diana Married Peter Gordon Colin Somervell in February 1960 and their daughter Katherine Somervell is a god-daughter of Queen Elizabeth II.  When it was revealed Nerissa and Katherine had been placed in Earlswood Hospital, suggestions of a royal cover-up were rejected in the press by Lord Clinton, who claimed his aunt Fenella had completed the form for Burke's Peerage incorrectly due to her being 'a vague person'. However, Burke's Peerage included specific dates of death for both sisters.  According to the Channel 4 documentary about the sisters, throughout their time at the hospital there is no known record that the sisters were ever visited by any member of the Bowes-Lyon or royal families.  It's thought the sisters' symptoms were due to a genetic condition from their mother's bloodline, not that of the Bowes-Lyon.  Katherine and Nerissa had three cousins in The Royal Earlswood Edonea, Rosemary and Etheldreday, the daughters of Fenella's sister Harriet who shared their disabilities.  John Bowes-Lyon died at the family home of Glamis Castle in February 1930 of pneumonia, aged 44. His widow was a leading guest at the Queen's wedding to Prince Philip in 1947.

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Articles / Father, 37, is jailed for three years after son he violently shook as a baby....

« on: November 09, 2020, 05:04:44 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8929093/Father-37-son-died-brain-injury-inflicted-baby-jailed-three-years.html

Father, 37, is jailed for three years after son he violently shook as a baby dies of brain injury aged 15

    John Doak, 37,  from Lincolnshire, pleaded guilty to killing his 15-year-old son
    Jack Mitchell died in 2016 after suffering injuries as a baby in Basildon, Essex
    He was taken into foster care, but his quality of life was said to be 'very poor'
    Essex Police say it is a 'truly tragic case,' as young man's future was 'taken away' 

By Luke May For Mailonline

Published: 15:37, 9 November 2020 | Updated: 15:42, 9 November 2020

A father has been jailed for three years after the son he violently shook as a baby died from complications of a brain injury at the age of 15.  John Doak, 37, was jailed at Chelmsford Crown Court today after admitting to the manslaughter of his son Jack Mitchell, who died in 2016.  Wheelchair-user Jack suffered severe traumatic brain injuries at the hands of his father when he was just four-months-old, while living in Laindon, near Basildon in Essex, in 2001.  He was taken into foster care after the assault, but grew up with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, curvature of the spine and blindness.  He required 24 hour care, was unable to talk, care or feed himself and the court heard Jack's quality of life was 'very poor indeed, if not non-existent'.

Following his death, a post-mortem examination found he had died from a pulmonary infection and pneumonia brought on by the injuries he had suffered.  Doak's sentence was reduced from eight years as the lorry driver had already served four years for GBH for the attack and admitted the killing on Friday.  Prosecutor Philip Evans told the court Doak, of Spalding, Lincolnshire, shook the infant when he was caring for Jack alone in Laindon, Essex, and the incident 'would be outside the window of what would be described as rough handling'.

The lad was rushed to hospital on May 22, 2001, after being found unresponsive and taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital where his brain injuries were uncovered.  The dad was found guilty of one count of GBH and was sentenced to a four year prison term in 2002.  Jack was put in foster care and Doak had no further contact with him and he died in hospital in 2016.  Following an inquest Doak was re-arrested and charged with his murder, but admitted to manslaughter at the earliest opportunity.  However Mr Justice Cavanagh ruled Doak never came 'clean about what happened' on that day and Jack endured 'great suffering and low quality of life' as a result of the assault.  He said: 'I have seen pictures of Jack as a baby and he was a lovely little boy.  Tragically he did not have sufficient time for his personality to develop before the assault led to his severe disabilities.'

In mitigation David Emanuel said Doak has been devastated by the death and it was unclear how the injuries were sustained but it was most likely 'what probably happened was the loss of control temporarily to try and stop Jack from crying'.

He said: 'He's never forgotten his son Jack, still loves him to this day and grieves for him everyday.  What happened on that day has changed him, shaped him and in a way broken him'

However Mr Justice Cavanagh ruled this was not sufficient mitigation and that Doak must serve a prison sentence.  He said: 'You were the only person present on 22 May 2001 apart from Jack, but you have never come clean about what happened.  You have not described the assault, or what your intentions were.  This was a single incident probably involving a temporary loss of control, but the fact remains that you shook a small and defenceless baby in a way that you must have known was a rough and inappropriate way to treat him, and which might cause him real harm.'

Senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Stuart Truss, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: 'This is a tragic case of a young man who had any chance of a future taken away by the actions of his father.  Jack's injuries he sustained as a child were so severe he required extensive, round-the-clock care.  John Doak was meant to care for and protect his son but instead deprived him of a future and now faces a significant amount of time in prison.  My thoughts also go out to Jack's adoptive parents who had given him many wonderful years before his death. They continue to live with the sad loss of Jack.'

567

Articles / Girl, 16, hides under pile of bloody bodies and pretends to be dead after ....

« on: November 09, 2020, 04:44:21 PM »

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/girl-16-hides-under-pile-22977070?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=MirrorNews7&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&ccid=2369561

Girl, 16, hides under pile of bloody bodies and pretends to be dead after party massacre

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES Maria Kosintseva survived as the killer stalked the flat with his gun. While hiding, she managed to send messages on social media begging for help

By Will Stewart

17:18, 8 NOV 2020

A teenager hid in a pool of blood under corpses pretending to be dead after a massacre at a party, Russian police said.  Maria Kosintseva, 16, survived uninjured as the killer stalked the flat with his gun.  The suspect, a computer game fanatic, went on the rampage at a party he hosted, shooting dead three guests and critically wounding another.  Dmitry Zakharov, 34, killed himself before police arrived at the property after the horror killings.  Polina Bardina, 18, died from a head wound and her friend Viktoria Paustovskaya, 17, suffered abdominal gunshot wounds.  His "close friends" barman Oleg Bregnev, 36, and estate agent Anton Anisimov, 32, were killed in the slaughter in the city of Yekaterinburg, east of the Ural Mountains.  The girl who survived after hiding under the corpses, together with another girl named Viktoria, managed to send harrowing social media messages from the bloodbath pleading for help.  But they lay at the murder scene for four hours before police arrived to rescue them.  The pair said they feared all the time that Zakharov would realise they were alive.  Maria said: "I pretended to be dead and was afraid to get out from under the bodies."

Losing blood, Viktoria crawled from the kitchen to the toilet and hid there.  The girls, who were friends, had been invited to join three men on a social media ‘party group’, and agreed because they were “bored of hanging out with boys of our own age”, said Maria.

They were not sexually harassed by the men who told them they were “best friends”, she said.  But suddenly security guard Zakharov got his Saiga hunting rifle, shouted "Let’s play" and "started shooting".

“He shot at me, but Anton fell down and covered me,” she said.  “Then he went to the kitchen, and I heard two shots, hitting Viktoria and Oleg.”

Lying in a pool of Anton and Polina’s blood and under their corpses, Maria found Anton’s mobile and used it to sign into her VK social media account a Russian online social media and social networking service.  She said: “I told my friends to call the police and ambulance. Viktoria did the same, that is how I knew she was alive…but I didn’t dare try and reach her to help."

Viktoria managed to record a distressing voice message in a hushed tone giving the address of the apartment.  "I'm losing consciousness. I know only that I'm alive,” she said.

“I'm, it looks like I'm already dying.  I'm lying here I feel that I'm losing [consciousness].”

She told her friends to warn rescuers that the man was armed and dangerous.  "I'm fainting. It's painful, terrible pain when I move.  I fear he will enter and see me alive. He will shoot me. Please, break down the door."

Her appalling wound was shown in a picture from Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.  Maria said there had been “no hint of threats” before Zakharov stopped playing a computer game, and started shooting.  He killed himself before police broke into the flat.  A criminal case for mass murder has been opened by the Russian Investigative Committee who confirmed that Zakharov’s body was found at the scene.  Police spokesman Colonel Valery Gorelykh said Viktoria “has undergone surgery and is in a serious condition.”

“The young women were hanging out in the area of Raduga Park shopping mall on the fateful night,” he said.

"They met the men via the Internet.  They picked them up in a car, after which the group left for Dmitry’s flat.”

Zakharov was described as a divorced father of one.

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General Discussion / Georgia Tann Abducted Children And Sold Them To Celebrities And Pedophiles,....

« on: November 09, 2020, 12:10:06 PM »

https://historydaily.org/georgia-tann

Georgia Tann Abducted Children And Sold Them To Celebrities And Pedophiles, Making Millions
People | November 8, 2019

Have you ever wondered why someone would get it into their head to steal babies and flip them like so many houses?

Well, you're in luck, friend. Buckle up, and hold onto your babies, because it's time to learn about Georgia Tann: pianist, social worker, and baby-napping enthusiast. You might call her a triple threat.

Cue Georgia's Birth

Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and by all accounts, was not baby-napped. Wouldn't that be a great origin story?

In flat reality, however, Tann was raised by her father, Judge George Tann, and her mother, Beulah Yates. Judge Tann was hellbent on Georgia playing the piano, and play she did, right through college, despite her apparent loathing of the forced musical rigor. Allegedly, she had aspirations toward law, but her father discouraged her on the sound basis that chicks can't argue well.  Apparently a bit of a masochist as well as a sadist, Tann nonetheless majored in music and graduated with a degree from Martha Washington College in 1913. Though she took and passed the bar exam, she ultimately studied social work at Columbia University for two summers. Once Tann had finished her education, she finally unleashed all the fury that only years of mandatory piano lessons can give a person. By 1924, she got into human trafficking.  What, were you expecting a scene phase?

The Worse-Than-A-Scene Phase

In 1922, Tann began working at the Mississippi Children's Home Society, but she got fired for "dubious child-placing practices" that official documents alarmingly don't elaborate. Following this termination, she and her "gal pal," Ann Atwood, packed up and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where Tann became Executive Secretary at the Shelby branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, who apparently didn't believe in background checks.  At the time, adoption was not popular or chic, and even worse for someone like Tann, it was not lucrative. You could adopt yourself a brand new baby to the tune of just $7 dollars, or a little over $100 in 2019 money. For perspective, you could buy one new iPhone, or you could buy eight babies. They were, shall we say, undervalued in the market.  Tann saw that market, and she had a solution: arrange expensive out-of-state adoptions, skim off the top, and then literally shred the evidence. Foolproof! The only problem, at that point, was procuring enough marketable babies. It seems that Memphis simply didn't produce enough orphans for Tann's liking, and there were only so many she could coerce from poor families, so she started straight-up stealing them. Think your child is safe in the hospital?

Nope: Nurses and doctors were in on it. What about at the park?

Wrong again they could be taken right off the playground. Have you just given birth and aren't fully aware of your surroundings due to, you know, giving birth?

Tough luck; you've just been baby-napped.  It's estimated that Tann was responsible for trafficking more than 5,000 children throughout 48 states. Most of these children were placed with affluent families in New York and California, and some of these rich parents were even celebrities, including Joan Crawford, Mary Pickford, Ric Flair, and Herbert Lehman. (Don't worry: There's no reason to think Tann's clients knew the children they adopted were kidnapped, so you're free to continue enjoying the Golden Age of Hollywood.) If you were lucky, you were placed with a wealthy family that was stable, sane, and even loving. If you were unlucky, your experience ran the gamut from being returned to the orphanage to plain, old death. Yes, seriously.

Speaking of Death

Tann didn't immediately place all these babies into the semi-capable arms of the semi-affluent. Between the stealing and the selling, she had to put them somewhere. That place was Tennessee Children's Home Society, where they were subjected to neglect that included the denial of medication and food your basic kids-definitely-need-it stuff. Many of the children were also straight-up abused, sometimes sexually, sometimes by Tann herself, having apparently looked in the mirror and thought "Nope needs to be more cartoon-villainy."

According to one report, the children were "dropping like flies" about 500 flies, to be exact. More of a swarm, really.  You might think that surely, these many children weren't disappearing without consequence, but alas, gentle reader, they were. Thanks to her lucrative scheme, Tann was friends with quite a few of the well-to-do around Memphis, including Judge Camille Kelley and Mayor E. H. "Boss" Crump, and it's not like the kind of person who's willing to sell children is above a little bribery. Ever the ambitious sort, Tann even used her "success" to befriend Eleanor Roosevelt, though it's doubtful that the first lady knew of Tann's affinity for infanticide.

Okay, But How Much Did She Make?

As mentioned, adoptions in Tennessee at the time went for about $7 a (mom and) pop, and Tann decided to up that a bit. She charged for background checks that she didn't do, documents that she didn't file, inflated travel expenses, and for some older prospective parents, essentially for the privilege of getting to adopt anyone at all. She padded the bill so heavily that she made over $1 million peddling children. It's really an appropriate word: She put ads in the paper captioned like Kewpie dolls, which no doubt appealed to the pedophiles she sometimes worked with when she couldn't land a celebrity. The most marketable children?

Blue-eyed blondes.  Despite making all this paper, she did very little of the actual paperwork. On top of that, she practiced exclusively closed adoptions. That means no information about the birth parents to anyone, and no information about the children to anyone, either. It's a license to keep people in the dark, and if Tann's enthusiasm for shredding is any indication, keeping people in the dark was the name of the game.  In fact, at the time, Tann was viewed as a sort of champion of orphaned children. She made adoption more commonplace, and her insistence on placing children with well-to-do families meant that adoption became associated with the upper class. In other words, she put adoption in vogue. That's how she managed to make the acquaintance of the first lady: She had become a small-time celebrity humanitarian, at least until people found out about all of the kidnappings and killings. That put a bit of a damper on her new friendships.

Did they get away with it, Scoob?

Pretty much, in the sense that no one went to jail. Tann died of uterine cancer three days before the state filed charges against the society. It's rather poetic for a woman who was responsible for the deaths of so many children to die from her womb, but it can't beat the regular ol' justice system.  Speaking of the justice system, that judge never did time, either. A handful of children have managed to get in touch with their birth parents, but thanks to Tennessee's closed adoption laws and Tann's shredding habit, many of the trails have long since gone cold.  In 2015, a memorial to Tann's hundreds of victims was placed in Memphis's Elmwood Cemetery, where 19 of the unnamed children are buried. If you're hoping that number is so low because the rest of the victims were identified and returned to their families to be laid to rest, we're sorry to disappoint you one final time: Their bodies were simply never recovered. Sleep tight!

569

Articles / Plans to turn fire-ravaged Loch Ness house of Aleister Crowley into holiday....

« on: November 03, 2020, 07:20:48 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8909027/Plans-turn-fire-ravaged-Loch-Ness-house-Aleister-Crowley-holiday-lodges.html

Plans to turn fire-ravaged Loch Ness house of Aleister Crowley into holiday lodges spark fears area will become a shrine for SATANISTS visiting home of 'world's wickedest man' who inspired some of Rock n' Roll's darkest music

    Occultist Aleister Crowley, founder of Ordo Templi Orientis, dubbed himself the 'wickedest man in the world'
    Plans submitted to turn Boleskine House, on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, into holiday accomodation
    The mansion was once home Crowley, who died in 1947, then bought by Led Zeppelin rocker Jimmy Page
    Objectors are 'worried for children' and fear it 'will become a major Satanic temple and a hub for Satanists'

By Amie Gordon For Mailonline

Published: 12:52, 3 November 2020 | Updated: 13:30, 3 November 2020

Plans to turn the former home of the 'wickedest man in the world' Aleister Crowley into holiday lodges have sparked fears it could become a Satanist pilgrimage site.  Plans have been submitted to turn Boleskine House, on the shores Loch Ness in Scotland, into 10 holiday 'twin units' with guided tours of the grounds.  But objectors to the development say they are worried for children and vulnerable adults in the area and fear it will 'become a major Satanic temple.'  The fire-damaged mansion, dubbed 'the most notorious home in the Highlands', was once home to the infamous occultist, philosopher and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley, who died in 1947.  Plans to turn the former home of the 'wickedest man in the world' Aleister Crowley into holiday lodges have sparked fears it could become a Satanist pilgrimage site.  Plans have been submitted to turn Boleskine House, on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, into 10 holiday 'twin units' with guided tours of the grounds.   But objectors to the development say they are worried for children and vulnerable adults in the area and fear it will 'become a major Satanic temple.'  The fire-damaged mansion, dubbed 'the most notorious home in the Highlands', was once home to the infamous occultist, philosopher and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley, who died in 1947.  He founded an occult religious movement named Thelema and styled himself as a prophet.  Crowley was also one of the founding 'prophets' of the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as OTO or 'Order of the Temple of the East', which has been linked to celebrities including Jay-Z and Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page.  The Beatles included Crowley on their iconic album artwork for their eight studio album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Crowley, who called himself The Beast 666 and had his teeth filed into fangs, was known to drink blood and stage huge orgies fuelled by heroin and cocaine.  Some 23 year after Crowley's death, the home was bought by Jimmy Page, who infrequently lived between it and London until 1992.  In 2015, a major fire devastated the B-listed Georgian building, stripping out the interior and collapsing the roof.  Keith Readdy purchased Boleskine House on the banks of Loch Ness with wife Kyra in July 2019 before placing it into the care of a charitable foundation.  Objector Naomi King said she is worried that if the development goes ahead 'the place will become a major Satanic temple and a hub for Satanist abusers from across the world to visit'.  She claims her comments on the council's planning portal had been 'sanitised' with all references to Satanism removed.  The planning application, lodged under the mansion house's Gaelic name of Baile Os Ceann, includes a proposal to create 10 holiday 'twin units' on the site with a reception area, storage and car parking as well as reinstatement and alterations to the main house and the installation of a sewage treatment plant.  Guided tours of parts of the main building and grounds are planned.  Trustees of the Boleskine House Foundation have vehemently denied the claims that it will attract Satanists.  Objections have prompted Boleskine House Foundation to issue a robust defence of its planning application.  It states: 'The charity has been formed to safeguard the future of the Boleskine House Estate so that it is secured for the local, national and international communities that value it as a place of historical significance.  The Boleskine House Foundation's ambition for Boleskine House is to conserve and to sympathetically rebuild the Category B Listed structure back to residential use, while also allowing limited guided tours of the impressive public rooms and external grounds.  The purpose of the guided tours being to answer the present public interest in the fascinating history of the site as well as to promote the ethos of historic building conservation.  The house's previous proprietors (most notably, parliamentary diplomat Archibald Campbell Fraser of Lovat, mountaineer and esoteric author Aleister Crowley and rock and roll musician Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame) are all a part of the story of the place but they do not directly influence its future use.  There is no intention for the house to become a place of pilgrimage or ritual, nefarious or otherwise.'

What is the Order of Oriental Templars?

Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as O.T.O or 'Order of the Temple of the East' and 'Order of Oriental Templars', is an international fraternal and religious organisation that was founded in the early 20th century and loosely modelled on Freemasonry.  It was founded by Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss as well as English author and occultist Aleister Crowley, who is the best-known and most influential member of the order and was widely believed to be a satanist in his lifetime.  Crowley, who called himself The Beast 666 and reportedly had his teeth filed into fangs, was known to drink blood and stage huge orgies fuelled by heroin and cocaine.  He was said to have mutilated women by carving signs on their breasts with red-hot daggers, and was accused of eating babies in magic rituals.  Crowley also founded the controversial Thelema religion in the early 20th century. Its key message is: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.'

Despite Crowley's death as an impoverished heroin addict at the age of 72 in 1947, he became an icon for anti-establishment figures in the 1960s.  Peaches Geldolf was believed to be a member of the society before her death in 2014, as she often tweeted about the group and its teachings and even had an OTO tattoo on her arm.  Both Jay-Z and Kanye West are among other famous faces that have been linked to the group. Kanye has worn jewellery of the Egyptian god Horus and pyramids, the symbol of Thelema, while Jay-Z sparked speculation he was a follower when he was seen wearing a T-shirt sporting Crowley's motto 'do what thou wilt'.  In 2013, the then head of OTO in Britain, John Bonner told the Mail that the cult was 'misunderstood'. 

He said: 'We are used to being misunderstood. Many stories about Crowley, like people saying he filed his teeth down into fangs, are nonsense.  You could call us a sex cult in a way, because we recognise, accept and adore the whole process which goes towards making tangible the previously intangible.'

Devotees of OTO say it can take years of study to understand the religion something Mr Bonner acknowledged.  He said: 'You're not supposed to just jump straight in to it. It takes time and study, but our rituals are not for public consumption. You need to join us and go through the initiation process before you can begin to understand.  'But according to our beliefs we can't turn anyone away. So if you are over 18, are passably sane and are free to attend initiations, then you have an undeniable right of membership.'

Mr Readdy, who published the book One Truth and One Spirit: Aleister Crowley's Spiritual Legacy, said he was a property developer with an academic interest in the history of the house.  He added: 'It is strange that we are never accused of giving guitar lessons or recruiting people to fight in a Jacobite uprising, yet these unfounded allegations about Satanism continue to be made about our work.'

It is understood Highland councillors will discuss the plans next month. 

Who was the 'wickedest man in the world' Aleister Crowley?

Born in Royal Leamingston Spa, Warwickshire in 1875, Crowley was an occultist, writer and mountaineer who rejected Christian doctrine and established Thelema.  Calling himself a prophet, he said he would be the one to guide humanity into the so-called 'Aeon of Horus' an age of spiritual interest and self-realisation.  Crowley, who was born into an upper-class British family, styled himself as 'the Great Beast 666'.  He was an unabashed occultist who, prior to his death in 1947, revelled in his infamy as 'the wickedest man in the world'.  His form of worship involved sadomasochistic sex rituals with men and women, spells which he claimed could raise malevolent gods and the use of hard drugs, including opium, cocaine, heroin and mescaline.  He was said to have mutilated women by carving signs on their breasts with red-hot daggers, and was accused of eating babies in magic rituals.  He was widely criticised for being 'in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time'.  Crowley's motto perpetuated by OTO was 'do what thou wilt'.  And it is this individualistic approach that has led to a lasting fascination among artists and celebrities.  He died at the age of 72 in Hastings, East Sussex in 1947.

570

Articles / Over 100,000 sign #RepealTheSeal petition on Mother & Baby Home testimony

« on: October 25, 2020, 01:05:15 PM »

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40070411.html

Over 100,000 sign #RepealTheSeal petition on Mother & Baby Home testimony

Sat, 24 Oct, 2020 - 23:11
Neil Michael

More than 100,00 people have now signed a petition calling for the seal to be lifted on archives testimony from survivors of Mother and Baby Homes.  Aitheantas, the adoptees’ rights group, only put up the petition on Friday on the Uplift.ie site but it quickly surpassed its initial target.  It follows the outcry stemming from the Thursday night vote by coalition TDs to seal the records for thirty years.  This was despite calls by other TDs and survivors for amendments to the Mother and Baby Homes Bill, which was passed by 78 votes to 67 with all but two non-Government TDs opposed.  Apart from a database that is being sent to the child and family agency, Tusla, the records will be sealed for the next 30 years.

Survivors' pleas

Opposition TDs had hoped to allow survivors of the system to decide whether their names and testimony should be disclosed but their amendments were refused.  Holly Cairns, the Cork South West Social Democrats TD, said it was disgraceful that after pleas from survivors that the Government refused to even consider one of the over 60 amendments from the opposition.  Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said his advice from the Attorney General was that access to the records had been explicitly restricted by the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004.  But, as the Irish Examiner reported earlier today, the office of the Data Protection Commission told the government before Thursday's vote that the 2018 Data Protection Act explicitly amended the 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act.  This was, it said, so any restriction on the right to access personal data processed by the Commission can only be implemented to the extent necessary and proportionate to safeguard the effective operation of commissions and the future cooperation of witnesses.  Maree Ryan-O’Brien, founder of Aitheantas, said “Access to information for survivors and adoptees has been denied for decades.  At the heart of the decision to deny the right to access the most basic information about my life is a denial of our truth.  It takes power away from survivors and perpetuates state abuse and narrow-minded views of the past. We need to move past this and let survivors and adoptees heal.”

The petition is simply put as being to "repeal the seal to allow Adoptees and Survivors to Open the Archive".  And it explains why this is important: "For the first time the Irish people can see for themselves the callousness with which the Irish State has treated Women and Children & survivors who came through Mother and Baby Homes, Baby Homes, industrial schools who are denied access to their own testimony, files and records this needs to stop."

Online artists join campaign to stop sealing of records

A group of online have also joined the campaign to halt the sealing of the records of Mother and Baby Home survivors.  The group of artists, a cross-disciplinary group working throughout the country say they hoped to make "collective action" in response to the bill.  In a statement, the group said: "We wanted to respond with urgency and anger following the government’s refusal to take amendments and their dismissal of survivors wishes, the advice of the data protection commissioner and human rights experts.
The artists central to the Mary Magdalene Series at Rua Red Alice Maher, Jesse Jones, Rachel Fallon, Grace Dyas and Amanda Coogan have lent their support to the campaign to halt the sealing of the Mother and Baby Home records.  We believe in the power of artistic actions and the power of art as a force for social change.  We cannot make physical collective protest at this time so we wanted to take action online in solidarity with survivors and those affected which could be replicated by others who felt the same.  We met together on zoom and decided on a simple hand gesture; You raise your hand when you wish to be heard.  The eye symbolises the ever-watchful citizen who sees injustice and wants it addressed."

The group said they wanted "to add our voices to the activists who have been working tirelessly to amplify this issue."

"We wanted to speak directly to survivors to let them know they were seen and heard and remind the Government that we would not forget," the group's statement added.