Synopsis
Untold Secrets voices the experiences of Irish institution survivors and focuses on the life and upbringing of one survivor, Anne Silke.
Review
Untold Secrets tells the harrowing story of The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home or Tuam Mother and Baby Home, as it is often referred to, which was a home that unwed mothers were sent to give birth. The home was run by the Bon Secour Sisters, a religious order of Roman Catholic nuns who also worked at the local Grove Hospital and operated between 1925 – 1961. In September 2013 it was discovered that over 800 infant children had been buried in a septic tank on the grounds of the home without any record of their existence.
Director Teresa Lavina states that when the story broke she was very drawn to it because similar events had happened to a close friend and their family in Spain and she felt that she needed to tell the story of the survivors of the home in Tuam. Lavina, who trained as Stanislavski actor in Bilbao Spain moved to Ireland in 1997 to pursue a career in acting but found her love in directing with a start with RTE in “Don’t Feed the Gondolas”. From there she has had written, directed, produced and acted in many films with her most recent offering being Untold Secrets which closed this year’s Galway Film Fleadh.
The documentary focuses on survivors PJ Haverty, Anne Kelly (nee Silke) and many more, local historian Catherine Corless and various members of the Irish parliament; all of which campaigned heavily for justice for the survivors of the home. Anne, who the documentary mainly focuses on, tells her story of abuse by late local Galway TD Mark Killiea Snr and his two sons Mark Jnr and Jarlath; who had fostered Anne from the home as a child.
She was subjected to years of physical, mental and sexual abuse and slave labour; all of which was vehemently denied by Mark Jnr and his family to his death in 2018. This is just one example of how the mothers and babies were treated both at the home and after the home, as they focused solely on the profitable aspect of the fostering system rather than finding a loving home for the children that were apparently in their “care”.
PJ Haverty, who spent most of his life at home in Tuam, describes it as “…probably the first supermarket in Ireland” as any of the babies that were put up for adoption or fostering, were advertised in the local newspaper almost as commodities. This process was supported by the local council in Tuam who benefited from the profits of these sales and did not bother to check if the families who were coming forward were suitable.
A local politician in the documentary states that while some children were fostered into loving homes, this wasn’t always the case with the majority being sold off to work at the new families home as a farmhand or servant of the house. They were segregated at their new home, eating at different times from the family and sleeping in horrid conditions; going to school was their only escape, even though while there they were also isolated from the rest of the class.
Hearing the heartbreaking accounts from the survivors of their time spent at the home really opens your eyes to institutions in Ireland that were open as recently as the 90s, much of which has gone unnoticed. In June 2014 a nationwide commission was ordered by the Irish government to investigate Ireland’s mother and baby homes, Tuam being one of the homes at the forefront due to the overbearing knowledge of the mass grave on sight.
Judge Yvonne Murphy led the investigation into clerical abuse which focused on practices between 1922 to 1998. In October 2016, the grounds at Tuam were excavated in the hopes of locating any human remains that were still present and in March 2017 the commission confirmed that there were “significant quantities of human remains” found; ageing between premature babies to 3-year-old toddlers. Numerous victims testified in the report, stating their accounts of the heinous acts of abuse they suffered under the hands of the Bon Secour nuns but unfortunately, as we find out within the documentary, the majority of their testimonies were either withheld or reduced in the final publication of the report in January of this year.
Anne died in February 2021, shortly after the report was published and who right up to her dying day was an advocate and ambassador for the survivors of Tuam; all of which her peers and family who appear in the documentary speak highly of her.
It’s a crying shame that Anne was not able to receive the justice she so rightly deserved for the years of torment she suffered and much like Anne there are many more who passed away without getting any answers but I know for a fact that those remaining survivors will carry on the work that Anne and others like her and strive to get justice for all of those affected by the horrors at The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home.
