Only one stone wall remains of the old mother and baby home in this town, but it has cast a shadow over all of Ireland.

Excavations are underway at a mass grave that may contain the remains of nearly 800 infants and young children. Part of this site includes an old septic tank on the property of a former institution managed by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.

This discovery has compelled Ireland and the Catholic Church, once pivotal to the nation’s identity, to confront a troubling past. Unmarried mothers were stigmatized, and their children were often taken from them, subjected to an oppressive system.

The grave site was found by accident by two boys approximately 50 years ago. However, the full extent of the grim reality only emerged when a local historian began researching the history of the facility.

Catherine Corless revealed that the site was atop a septic tank and that 796 deceased infants were unaccounted for. Her findings caused a scandal when the international news media wrote about her work in 2014.

When test excavations later confirmed an untold number of tiny skeletons were in the sewage pit, then-Prime Minister Enda Kenny called it a “chamber of horrors.”

Pope Francis later apologized for the church’s “crimes” that included forced separations of unwed mothers and children. The nuns apologized for not living up to their Christianity.

A cold, cramped and deadly place

The homes were not unique to Ireland and followed a Victorian-era practice of institutionalizing the poor, troubled and neglected children, and unmarried mothers.

The Tuam home was cold, crowded and deadly. Mothers worked there for up to a year before being cast out — almost always without their children.

Corless’ report led to a government investigation that found 9,000 children, or 15%, died in mother and baby homes in the 20th century. The Tuam home — open from 1925 to 1961 — had the highest death rate.

Corless said she was driven to expose the story “the more I realized how those poor, unfortunate, vulnerable kids, through no fault of their own, had to go through this life.”

Discovering deeply held secrets

Corless’ work brought together survivors of the homes and children who discovered their own mothers had given birth to long-lost relatives who died there.

Annette McKay said there’s still a level of denial about the abuse, rape and incest that led some women to the homes while fathers were not held accountable.

“They say things like the women were incarcerated and enslaved for being pregnant,” McKay said. “Well, how did they get pregnant? Was it like an immaculate conception?”

Her mother ended up in the home after being raped as a teenager by the caretaker of the industrial school where she had been sentenced for “delinquency” after her mother died and father, a British soldier, abdicated responsibility.

Her mother, Margaret “Maggie” O’Connor, only revealed her secret when she was in her 70s, sobbing hysterically when the story finally came out.

Six months after giving birth in Tuam in 1942, O’Connor was hanging laundry at another home where she had been transferred when a nun told her, “the child of your sin is dead.”

She never spoke of it again.

Some 20 years later, a Sunday newspaper headline about a “shock discovery” in Tuam caught McKay’s attention. Among the names was her long-lost sister, Mary Margaret O’Connor, who died in 1943.

Shame’s long shadow

Barbara Buckley was born in the Tuam home in 1957 and was 19 months old when she was adopted by a family in Cork.

She was an adult when a cousin told her she’d been adopted and was later able to find her birth mother through an agency.

Her mother came to visit from London for two days in 2000 and happened to be there on her 43rd birthday, though she didn’t realize it.

“I found it very hard to understand, how did she not know it was my birthday?” Buckley said. “Delving deep into the thoughts of the mothers, you know, they put it so far back. They weren’t dealing with it anymore.”

She said her mother had worked in the laundry and was sent away after a year, despite asking to stay longer. Her lasting memory of the place was only being able to see the sky above the high walls.

At the end of their visit, her mother told her it had been lovely to meet her and her family, but said she’d never see her again.

Buckley was devastated at the rejection and asked why.

“She said, ‘I don’t want anyone finding out about this,’” Buckley said. “Going back to 1957 — and it was still a dark secret.”

Luck of the Irish

Pete Cochran considers himself one of the lucky ones.

He was 16 months old when he got out of the home and was adopted by a family in the U.S., where he avoided the stigma that would have dogged him as a so-called illegitimate child in his homeland.

During his visit to Tuam before the dig began, a man from town told him at a bar: “I respect you now, but growing up, I used to spit on you because that’s what I was taught.”

Cochran hopes the dig turns up few remains.

“I hope they don’t find 796 bodies,” he said. “That all these children were adopted and had a good life like I did.”

McKay has had the same hope for her sister. But even if they found a thimble full of her remains, she’d like to reunite her with her mom, who died in 2016.

“The headstone hasn’t got my mother’s name on it because I fought everybody to say I refuse to put my mom’s name on until she can have her child with her,” McKay said.