Although it is now more than six decades ago, Therese \u2018Terry\u2019 Meyer is adamant that she saw a baby\u2019s body being buried in the grounds of a Cork City mother and baby institution.<\/p>\n
This will allow for the building of 106 homes on the site, despite concerns that the bodies of hundreds of missing children could be buried there.<\/p>\n
Between 1922 and 1998, Bessborough was run as a mother and baby institution by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In that time, 9,768 mothers and 8,938 babies were admitted there.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation found that of 923 Bessborough infant deaths, burial records existed for only 64. It concluded it was \u201chighly likely\u201d that some of the missing 859 children were buried on the institution\u2019s grounds.<\/p>\n
![\"Earlier](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5153795_17_articleinline_25-1_24_.jpeg\" "\\"Earlier")
Earlier this week, the gates of the former Bessborough mother and baby home in Blackrock, Cork City, were covered with teddy bears during a vigil which saw scores of people gather to protest Cork City Council\u2019s approval of 140 apartments despite concerns over the burial places of 923 children. Picture: Chani Anderson<\/p>\n
Terry Meyer was born there, the child of a single mother, in the 1950s, and spent the first four years of her life there. Despite the passage of time, some things, she says, remain as clear as day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was there for over four years. I was adopted through Catholic charities to older parents, but through those years, I do remember what happened, how I lived there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She describes the nuns as \u201catrocious\u201d, and says the children were treated appallingly in Bessborough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were told every day we were the devil\u2019s spawn; we weren\u2019t worth anything. Many a time, you were slapped, you were hit,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were never given any type of warmth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n I know some of the mothers who were there wanted to just give a hug or give a warm touch, but they were not allowed to do that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
Ms Meyer says she has a clear memory of one day when she and another child had run off from the institution, toward the folly beside the nuns\u2019 graveyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a little boy with me,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI don\u2019t remember children\u2019s names, that part I don\u2019t remember, but we saw a baby being buried, and we got the literal you-know-what beaten out of us because we were in an area we weren\u2019t supposed to be in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had run away from everybody. I kept saying, \u2018what is that?\u2019 When you\u2019re that little, you don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on all the time, and they said, \u2018oh, it\u2019s just a doll\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says she had no idea what a doll was: \u201cThe only toy I had was a plastic horse. That was my toy.<\/p>\n
![\"Therese](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5153798_17_articleinline_2.jpg\" "\\"Therese")
Therese Meyer, inset, said the Government must step in and compulsorily purchase the Bessborough site, and order a forensic examination of the grounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just innocents, we just were pure innocents, but we were the scum of the earth as far as the nuns were concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n
The area in which Ms Meyer says she saw a burial is not currently earmarked for development, but she and other survivors say children\u2019s bodies could have been buried anywhere on what was then a 200-acre estate, and now consists of 60 undeveloped acres.<\/p>\n
Now close to 70, the soft-spoken Irish-American says she has vivid and disturbing memories of her time in the mother and baby institution. She says:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n I just remember always being scared, always being afraid.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you could hide within yourself, you would try and do that because you were afraid of what was going to happen to you next.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although adopted by a kind American couple who she says became her \u201creal parents\u201d, Ms Meyer has struggled all her life with low self-esteem.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy adoptive parents, God bless them, were a little bit older. They couldn\u2019t have children, but they wanted to have children,\u201d she says. \u201cThey had adopted an older boy, my brother. He may not have been my brother by blood, but he was definitely my brother growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always had it that you weren\u2019t worth anything, and I never really said much. My family here, I love them all dearly, we have always had a very close relationship, but you always have it in your back of your mind that you\u2019re not worth anything, that you shouldn\u2019t be having anything good.<\/p>\n
\n It was drummed and beaten into you, that you were worthless.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
Ms Meyer and her husband have been married 43 years. They have four daughters, two of whom she says are in heaven, and two young grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cGod bless my husband, he\u2019s had to put up with my ups and my downs, but he could never figure out why I would wake up screaming, and I just never said why, but it was because I was remembering and reliving,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In 1999, after her adoptive parents and her brother had died, she became seriously ill with double pneumonia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always kept getting pneumonia, which you could probably trace back to Bessborough,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was really sick. I was at the point where they ask you what your family history is.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I got tired of saying \u2018I don\u2019t know, beats me\u2019. I felt, having been that sick and hospitalised for seven days, I needed to find something. I knew where I was from. I knew I was from Bessborough, and I just decided that I was going to go search and I wasn\u2019t going to stop until I found something.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her quest to find who she was, Ms Meyer met her birth mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did find my birth mother,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look exactly like her, except she had blue eyes, and I have green. And I\u2019ve been told by many people over there that I\u2019ve met through the years that I have very much her attitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you know, not all reunions are happy reunions, let\u2019s just leave it at that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI met her at Bessborough. She would not admit who I was. I was to be her sister. That\u2019s how the story was told. She wouldn\u2019t tell her husband who I was. She said I was her sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, when you got 19 years between you and you look pretty much alike, you\u2019d be suspicious, but anyway, I met her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe minute we pulled up on the grounds of Bessborough, I told my husband exactly where the statue was, and he was astounded that I could remember that, and he said, \u2018are you okay?\u2019 I guess every ounce of colour went out of me, and I looked like it was going to drop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting did not go well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not a great get-together with my birth mother. She would never tell me anything,\u201d Ms Meyer says. \u201cThe only good thing that came out of it was meeting her husband, and after she passed away, her husband \u2014 he was a dear, dear man \u2014 and I told him.<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5153801_16_articleinline_LC_20bessborough_2009.jpg\" "\\"")
Painted stones and stuffed toys at the ‘folly’ of the nuns graveyard site in memory of those affected by the former mother and baby home at Bessborough, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins<\/p>\n
\u201cI told him the truth, and he just started crying and said it wouldn\u2019t have mattered: \u2018You know, it wouldn\u2019t have mattered to me.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I said: \u2018Well, she was afraid that it would come back.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI think with many a mother, they were afraid that it would come back, because that was the greatest sin in the world, to be unmarried and be pregnant.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he said it wouldn\u2019t have mattered to him whether, but it obviously mattered to her, and I think she definitely had many issues from that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“She did go on to have children, but I think it scarred her.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the 2021 Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation report came out, she says, something inside her snapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said: \u2018I can\u2019t be quiet anymore, I know I\u2019m not the only one that feels this way and feels we have the right to know who we are,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up connecting with Carmel Cantwell [of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group], God bless her.\u201d<\/p>\n
She joined the campaign for a change in Irish law, to grant adopted people a full legal right to their original birth certificates, birth histories, and medical information, and, she says, she became a bane to the then minister with responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started searching and connecting with people, and I\u2019ve been called very tenacious when I want to find something out, and I met with minister Roderic O\u2019Gorman, I had many a visit with him,\u201d she says. \u201cI think he was like, \u2018oh my God, here she is\u2019, but I was on Webexes and everything else, and I fought for that law to be passed that we had the right to get our information.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe information I was given was totally redacted, and I said: \u2018This is wrong. We\u2019re human beings. We have the right to know. We don\u2019t know who we come from.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Birth Information and Tracing Act came into law in 2022, but, she says, she is still waiting on her own information.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same as the redress, and honestly, I don\u2019t know what money is going to do for us, but you know, if we\u2019re entitled to it, if it can go to something, that\u2019s fine,\u201d Ms Meyer says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact there are so many survivors, the more I learned, the more horrified I got, the more I got justified in fighting to find the information out that we needed to know, and that\u2019s been my fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Meyer is the president of the New York State Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, the sister organisation of the oldest and largest Irish Catholic fraternal organisation in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a very dear friend that was a mother in Bessborough. It was coincidence, in a conversation in New York City, sitting having dinner after a New York City St Patrick\u2019s parade meeting, I don\u2019t know how we got even on the conversation, but it turned out that she was a Bessborough mother and I\u2019m a Bessborough child, and when you put the stories together, when I hear what she went through, it horrifies me, when she sits there in tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s now 85 years old. She\u2019s a dear woman, but when she tells you how she was locked in a room for 24 hours, a cold room, by herself, left alone, screaming in labour, and the nuns just left, closed the doors, and they went off to pray.<\/p>\n
\n This is the way these mothers were treated.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
“You know they didn\u2019t get pregnant by themselves, unless it\u2019s the immaculate conception, nobody does, but there was never any accountability for the men.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome thought they were in love, young love, that happens. Others, I\u2019m sure there\u2019s plenty of men out there that don\u2019t know they\u2019re fathers. You know, she told me the story about her and the gentleman that she got pregnant to. She was young, 16 or 17. You\u2019ve heard these stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Everybody\u2019s heard these stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe went over to England.\u00a0 They thought they could be safe over there. They turned to the nuns; they went to some place that they thought was a safe haven. She was turned over and sent back to Bessborough, and this is what they did to many a mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they live with that shame, but she was honest when she realised who I was and my backstory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We had a common bond with each other, but when you hear that side of it, you\u2019re just even more horrified.<\/p>\n
\n But as a child, we went through hell, and we still live through hell.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
Last night, my husband grabbed my arm. I don\u2019t even know that I\u2019m screaming in my sleep anymore. He just grabs me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019ve been very involved with fighting for survivors or trying to see what I could do, who I could talk to, what group I need to try and speak to, it just stirs things up. The decision to uphold planning for apartments at Bessborough, to me, that was a stab in my heart and in my soul, because it just showed the inhumanity, and the callousness.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the way now clear for building on what she calls \u201csacred ground, holy ground\u201d, Ms Meyer says the Government must step in, compulsorily purchase the Bessborough site, and order a forensic examination of the grounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to find them,\u201d she says. \u201cThose babies count.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n They were human beings. They were children of God.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
“They were somebody\u2019s daughter or son. They mattered. They matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although it is now more than six decades ago, Therese \u2018Terry\u2019 Meyer is adamant that she saw a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17670,12780,79,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-547040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-mother-and-baby-homes","tag-catholic-church","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}