TAOISEACH MICHEÁL MARTIN today delivered a landmark apology to survivors of mother and baby homes.

It comes following the publication of the report by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission following a five-year investigation.

Below is the full text of the Taoiseach’s apology:

It is the duty of a republic to be willing to hold itself to account. To be willing to confront hard truths – and accept parts of our history which are deeply uncomfortable.This detailed and highly painful report is a moment for us as a society to recognise a profound failure of empathy, understanding and basic humanity over a very lengthy period.Its production has been possible because of the depth of courage shown by all those who shared their personal experiences with the Commission.

The report gives survivors what they have been denied for so long: their voice, their individuality, their right to be acknowledged.

More than half of the allegations of sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant minors by adult staff occurred in shelters run by just three contractors — nonprofits that received federal grants totaling more than $2.5 billion over the past four years, according to USAspending.gov.

Data: Office of Refugee Resettlement; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

By the numbers: The federal government has received as many as 10 separate reports of alleged sexual abuse by staff at multiple migrant child shelters over the past four years, totaling 178 allegations against adult staff members, according to HHS documents given to Axios.

These staffers work at shelters for migrant children, which are operated by nonprofits and funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS says it's responsible for "overseeing the infrastructure and personnel of [Office of Refugee Resettlement]-funded care provider facilities" and "ensuring compliance with ORR national care standards."

HHS declined to comment for this story.

The work, made in black and white and with a realistic aesthetic, is based on a real life story. The protagonist is Georgina, an Ayacucho woman who arrives in Lima about to give birth to later suffer the abduction of her baby as soon as she is born. The young woman seeks help from the authorities but ignored, decides to report in the press and gains the support of a journalist who undertakes the task of investigating the case.

Song Without a Name had its world premiere at the prestigious Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival , where it achieved unanimous critical support. Since then it has been released in France, where it remained on the bill for eight weeks; and then in Spain, Switzerland, Italy and the United States.

With this premiere, Netflix is ??betting on the profitability of Peruvian cinema , which has previously had major international successes also from the hand of female filmmakers, such as Madeinusa and La teta humana, both by Claudia Llosa, for example.

.

In an earlier article entitled "Citizenship for Adopted Children - A Malaysian Perspective [2013] 1 MLJ xiii", we described the story of a child who was given up for adoption by his biological parents and was subsequently adopted by Malaysian citizens. In the judicial review proceedings, the parents sought from the High Court declarations that the child is a Malaysian citizen pursuant to Section 1(a) and Section 1(e) of Part II of the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution. Lau Bee Lan J (now JCA) in Lee Chin Pon & Anor v Registrar-General of Births and Deaths, Malaysia [2010] (unreported) declared the child a citizen by operation of law.

Since the decision of Lee Chin Pon, a number of similar cases have been brought to the Courts with mixed results and inconsistent outcomes. In this article, we describe five cases in which the children (referred to as P, C, L, T and M to respect their privacy) sought judicial recognition of their citizenship by operation of law under Article 14 of the Federal Constitution. These matters originated in the High Court and were eventually set for joint hearings at the Federal Court.

Detailed submissions were prepared and filed in the Federal Court. Counsel were ready with oral arguments. However, after repeated adjournments, the appeals were ultimately settled when the Ministry of Home Affairs granted citizenship by registration under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution to the children. In the absence of a decision by the Federal Court on the merits of the novel issues, the uncertainty and inconsistencies in the law remain.

This article will start with a summary of the facts, issues and proceedings in the five cases. The arguments raised by parties in the written submissions filed in the Federal Court will also be set out. This article concludes with a description of the journey at the Federal Court leading to the amicable settlement of these matters.

In the matter of P (A Child)

Allegations that large sums of money were paid to adopt children held in Mother and Baby Homes are “impossible to prove and impossible to disprove”, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission has found.

Official records show that between 1922 and 1998, 1,638 children who were resident in mother and baby homes and four county homes were placed for foreign adoption – 1,427 children went to the US.

Noting that “many allegations have been made” about payments, the commission said it is unlikely that there would be any documentary evidence of any such transactions.

Some of the language used by those looking to adopt was “crass”, the commission said. “Some had an undue sense of entitlement – they were good people and should be given a child. Others were very specific in their requirements.”

One woman told Galway County Council that she wanted a blonde, blue-eyed girl. “Such language displays a sense of entitlement, but it does not necessarily mean that they were ‘buying’ children,” the commission found.

The fostering system or ‘boarding out’ of children began in the era of the Workhouse, where boys and girls of working age were routinely fostered out to farmers in the neighbouring townlands to assist in household and farm duties.

This system became popular in the era of the Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland.

With the closing of the Glenamaddy Workhouse/Hospital in 1925, the Bon Secours Sisters who nursed there were asked by the Galway Health Board to come to the Tuam Workhouse to run it as a Mother and Baby Home.

.

A STATE APOLOGY, redress and access to their birth information should be given to survivors of mother and baby homes, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation has recommended.

The commission’s long-awaited final report – which can be read here – was published today.

The document, spanning 2,865 pages, details the experiences of women and children who lived in 14 mother and baby homes and four county homes – a sample of the overall number of homes – between 1922 and 1998.

It confirms that about 9,000 children died in the 18 homes under investigation – about 15% of all the children who were in the institutions.

The report notes: “In the years before 1960 mother and baby homes did not save the lives of ‘illegitimate’ children; in fact, they appear to have significantly reduced their prospects of survival. The very high mortality rates were known to local and national authorities at the time and were recorded in official publications.”

Dr Lorraine Grimes’s research has laid bare the trauma of women forced to enter mother and baby homes and give up their babies for adoption

The lives of women forced to enter mother and baby homes were often forever marred by the experience.

Many went on to build productive lives and loving families after their trauma, but many others did not.

Exhaustive research by an NUIG academic unearthed the stories of women and girls forced to flee to England in a bid to outrun the shame and stigma attached to unmarried motherhood.

Dr Lorraine Grimes worked part-time in a bar while studying for her master’s to fund flights to the UK, where she trawled archives and public records. She wanted to find out what happened to women abandoned and cast out from their people and place.

While adoption represents the possibility of creating a new happy family, it is no less difficult for some adopted children. This is the case of Brigitta, a young woman of 28 adopted at the age of two in Romania by French parents. But thanks to his perseverance and the work of the association "The way to us", she has achieved the unthinkable: to find her biological mother. http://lecheminjusquanous.com/

Berlin (epd) . The federal and state governments have settled their dispute under the adoption assistance law. They agreed in the mediation committee of the Bundesrat and Bundestag on Thursday to lift the controversial obligation to provide advice on stepchild adoption for lesbian parents, as the spokeswoman for the Federal Council announced in Berlin on Friday.

The obligation to seek advice does not apply to lesbian couples if the child is born into a marriage or a long-term relationship. The law, which the Bundestag had already passed, provides for an obligation to provide advice to adoption agencies in the case of stepchild adoptions, i.e. if one partner wants to adopt the other's child.

Since in lesbian marriages or civil partnerships both partners do not automatically become parents when one has a child, they have so far been forced to adopt stepchildren. The majority of the federal states saw the obligation to provide advice for these couples as an additional form of discrimination and refused to approve the bill by Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey (SPD). The federal government then called the mediation committee at the beginning of December.

Further regulations of the Adoption Assistance Act are not in dispute. It guarantees adoptive parents a legal right to counseling, promotes open adoption with contacts between the adoptive parents and the child's family of origin, and prohibits adoptions abroad that are not arranged by specialist agencies. Its aim is to improve child protection in the event of adoptions and to make it more difficult to trade in children from abroad.

.