This article, with accompanying short video documentary, from the New York Times tells an in-depth and harrowing story of an amateur historian, Catherine Corless, seeking to learn about the history of a "mother and baby home" run by Bon Secours nuns in the town of Tuam, Ireland, and the story of mistreatment, poor conditions, trafficking, and unmarked graves she uncovered.
In conducting her initial research of the home in 2012, Corless found few records of the children or what had happened to them in that institution. Eventually, she came across a story that some human bones had been discovered in the grounds of the home in the 1970s and that there had been little follow-up on this discovery. Through further research and inquiry into available records, Corless also learned of the poor conditions and severe maltreatment and malnourishment of the children in the care of the institution. She also obtained information on the names and ages of the 796 children who had died in the home during its 36 years of operation, without any information as to where their remains were buried.
Corless published an essay later that year suggesting that the children living in the Tuam home who had died there were buried in unconsecrated and unmarked graves within the grounds, their remains having been discovered in the 1970s by local boys. In March 2017, a government inspection of the grounds confirmed that "significant quantities" of children's remains (which dated to the years of the home's operation) had been found in an underground chamber on the property. A government commission started to investigate 14 mother and baby homes throughout Ireland, including the Tuam home, in 2015. The report is due in 2018.
The article and video share the stories of several people who spent years of their childhoods in the Tuam home, and the conditions and treatment they experienced there. One man discovered through Corless's research into the death records, that he may have had a sister who allegedly died at the age of 10 months. Corless and others speculate that some of the children who were listed as dead may have been trafficked - illegally adopted - to the United States.