‘Chamber of horrors’ finally being exhumed at mass baby grave site
FILE - A general view of the remembrance garden on the former site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home can be seen on June 15, 2025 in Tuam, Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
A mass grave that could hold up to nearly 800 infants and young children is being excavated on the grounds of the former home in Ireland run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.
The grave was accidentally discovered by two boys a half century ago. But the true horror of the place was not known until a local historian began digging into the home’s history.
Exhumation begins
The burial site has forced Ireland and the Catholic Church to reckon with a legacy of having shunned unmarried mothers and separated them from their children left at the mercy of a cruel system.
How the mass grave was discovered
The backstory:
The home, which was closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
Investigators later found a mass grave possibly containing the remains of babies and young children in an underground sewage structure on the grounds of the home. Ireland’s Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes determined that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years.
An inquiry into the mother-and-baby homes found that, in total, about 9,000 children died in 18 different mother-and-baby homes, with causes including respiratory infections and gastroenteritis, otherwise known as the stomach flu.
Nuns offer apology
What they're saying:
The sisters who ran the home offered a "profound apology" and acknowledged that they had failed to "protect the inherent dignity" of women and children housed there.
"It’s a very, very difficult, harrowing story and situation. We have to wait to see what unfolds now as a result of the excavation," Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said in June.
What's next:
The excavation is expected to take two years to complete.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from The Associated Press and previous reporting by FOX Local.