Safe Ireland: Mother's Day: Hidden Stories

TBWADublin seek to shine a light on the survivors of the Mother and Baby Homes. A recent government report released on Mother and Baby Homes – religious institutions for unmarried mothers and their children that doubled as orphanages and adoption agencies – chronicles deprivation, misogyny, stigma, racism, discrimination and in some cases shocking levels of infant mortality. Approximately 15% of the 57,000 babies born between 1922 and 1998 died at the hands of these religious figures. One in seven babies died across the 18 institutions almost double the infant mortality rate at the time.

TBWADublin have teamed up with Safe Ireland, a charity working to create a safer Ireland for women and children, to give voice to hidden mothers and all silenced women, on Mother’s Day.

They created special Mother’s day card campaign called ‘Mother’s Day, The Hidden Stories’. The cards contained voice recordings from survivors of the Mother and Baby institutions, telling their stories. Safe Ireland’s message inside the cards highlights that the coercion in families and communities that led to thousands of Irish women being sent to the institutions, sadly very much still exists today in many families and wider society.

The campaign aims to remind the public of the oppression of women in our past and its correlation with the present, so we can work to prevent it continuing into the future.

The campaign also hopes that by giving voice to the survivors of Mother and Baby Homes, it will empower those who are still suffering coercion in silence to speak up and avail of domestic violence services.

A short film that documented the public discovering the cards was shot around Dublin, Ireland last week.