Request regarding scandal of 800 children found buried in Magdalene home in Galway.

[Brian Shanahan]

Neglect is not murder.

It is when you are being paid three times, from the state (which paid the average industrial wage for each child taken in), the church (significant funds were set aside by the rcc for these places, plus the monies earned by the selling on of children to American couples who were refused adoptions back home) and the families of the young women themselves and the young women's labour (and if the family were too poor, the woman would have to give slave labour for between three and seven years after the birth), all supposedly to care for the child.

And under Irish law criminal negligence is a sufficient mens rea clause to be able to convict a person under the law for the crime of manslaughter (I know the article only discusses English law, but in this case {as with many others} Irish law is substantively the same). When you have that many resources and are living in a country with a good healthcare system (Ireland had nothing comparable to the NHS but it was always at the high end regarding medical care), and yet your orphanage has a child mortality rate at three times the national average sustained over a period of thirty years, then you have to conclude that the deaths were caused by criminal neglect, thus the children were murdered.

[antisocialmunky]

There are some documentaries on what was going on in these facilities to the women sent to them which paint a pretty awful picture of the lack of oversight these places had. No idea if it was worse than the mental asylums and other comparable facilities from the same time period though.

[ipecac]

Neglect is not murder.

It is when you are being paid three times, from the state (which paid the average industrial wage for each child taken in), the church (significant funds were set aside by the rcc for these places, plus the monies earned by the selling on of children to American couples who were refused adoptions back home) and the families of the young women themselves and the young women's labour (and if the family were too poor, the woman would have to give slave labour for between three and seven years after the birth), all supposedly to care for the child.

And under Irish law criminal negligence is a sufficient mens rea clause to be able to convict a person under the law for the crime of manslaughter (I know the article only discusses English law, but in this case {as with many others} Irish law is substantively the same). When you have that many resources and are living in a country with a good healthcare system (Ireland had nothing comparable to the NHS but it was always at the high end regarding medical care), and yet your orphanage has a child mortality rate at three times the national average sustained over a period of thirty years, then you have to conclude that the deaths were caused by criminal neglect, thus the children were murdered.

Could you provide links to the relevant statistics?

Also, manslaughter=/=murder.