
15,000 illegal adoptions in Ireland, mothers told babies had died - vezycash
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/illegal-adoptions-ireland
======
chongli
This article was really frustrating to read. It never actually explained what
illegal adoption entails. It said some mothers were told their babies had
died. So, what, these adoptions took place without consent of the birth
parents? I wouldn't call that illegal adoption, I'd call it kidnapping.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I wouldn't call that illegal adoption, I'd call it kidnapping.

Taking the children from their birth parents under false pretenses is
kidnapping, adopting the kidnapped children out is illegal adoption. They
aren't mutually exclusive acts.

~~~
mehrdadn
I don't think that was GP's point though.

~~~
chongli
Yeah. My main point is that, if these babies were really being taken without
consent, then calling it "illegal adoption" is like calling bank robbery
"speeding" because the robbers broke the speed limit in their getaway car.

The term "illegal adoption" carries connotations of (intentionally or
otherwise) misfiled paperwork, not kidnapping.

------
through
I agree with point made by 300bps - concrete information is necessary, but
such 'tolerated' behaviour by the institutions affiliated with the Irish
government is not unknown. This is not necessarily down to vice, but to a
bizarre fastening to a cultural dysfunction that is rampant and "normal" in
the Irish government if you were to accept their duplicity. No-one can get
fired, there is no accountability, their stance on life and well being is well
out of line with most modern Irish people (which thankfully voted yes
recently), and intergenerational guilt prevents them from separating the
catholic church from state. To be clear, I say this as an Irish atheist and
with an already exiting intention to leave. Apart from the amount of hurt and
pain that these absolutely unfounded "traditional" practices have, they serve
no valid purpose and there is no one to blame. Such a duplicitous culture.
Such an island of backwards savages if you were to assume the government
represents the people who actually live here. Apologies for ranting. I hope
the human beings that have had their identities distorted have the courage to
find themselves and to accept themselves unconditionally.

~~~
soneil
This strikes me of Ireland's version of Snowden, in that we essentially knew
about it all along, but it's taken the arrival of wide-spread evidence for
anything to actually happen.

The good news is that it is actually happening. I don't actually think we're
going to see anyone punished, but we are seeing change, which is much more
important. Ireland's progressed a long way from so narrowly accepting divorce,
in an astonishingly short amount of time. It's become quite clear that the
current generation aren't going to allow the Church free reign anymore.

------
300bps
From the article, there are 126 known cases. The 15,000 figure is from a quote
note directly attributed in the article which said:

 _“I suspect every single adoption agency in the country is involved, that’s
150,000 babies, it would be amazing if at least ten percent of them were not
illegal.”_

------
in_cahoots
This article is about a related scandal and may provide more context:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-
of-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-babies-
and-children-found-at-tuam-orphanage-in-ireland)

Ireland had a practice of shaming and pressuring unmarried women to give up
their babies for adoption. This pressure came from families, church, and the
broader society. These babies were treated as second-class citizens in
orphanages. Some (many) of them died, others were adopted. So while the entire
practice was abhorrent, these children were taken through coercion, not
kidnapping.

~~~
yebyen
This article is terrible and seems to have been flagged off the front page,
but how do you know that it didn't happen exactly like they say?

The Reddit thread I linked below had corroborating witnesses showing up to say
that is exactly how it happened. Some children were shipped overseas with
their mothers' coerced consent, some parents were shown dead babies and their
children were never heard from again.

Some were left to die and tossed down a hole without a funeral, some were made
to work as slaves in the orphanage... and it's not the only primarily Catholic
country where this scam was prevalent; if the stories are to be believed this
was an order of magnitude more common in Spain around the same time.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8ppl72/comment/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8ppl72/comment/e0d8zhe)

------
apo
_“I suspect every single adoption agency in the country is involved, that’s
150,000 babies, it would be amazing if at least ten percent of them were not
illegal.”_

Clickbait. Misleading.

------
LyndsySimon
This sort of thing also ties in nicely with the rumors/conspiracy theories
around Chief Justice Roberts.

------
purple-again
This was a major plot point in Sons of Anarchy almost a decade ago.

Life imitating art, or art imitating life?

~~~
sp332
_The 126 established cases were registered by St Patrick’s Guild adoption
society between 1946 and 1969._

