Barry, Dan. “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to Do With Children's Remains?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/world/europe/tuam-ireland-lost-children.html.
Dan Barry’s article, “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to Do With Children's Remains?” discusses a case in Ireland where the Catholic nuns ran a home for unwed mothers buried many bodies of young children. In a report conducted by a team of forensic experts, it stated that “The group has not identified any directly comparable cases, either nationally or internationally, that involved the complexities of commingled juvenile human remains, in significant quantities and in such a restricted physical location,” revealing the abuse of human rights and the extreme control over women in the home. After this discovery, authorities made the decision to “conduct a forensic exam of most of the site, including its car park and grassy playground; exhume all relevant human remains; and do exhaustive DNA testing for possible identification.” As of March 2017, forensic investigators from Commision of Investigation Into Mother and Baby Homes confirmed the fact that the remains of hundreds of children were disposed of in a no longer active drainage system.
Barry’s article brought attention to a case in which human rights and proper respect towards and the dead were ignored, as hundreds of young children were disposed of in drainage systems. It is important that those who die are given a proper burial and are treated with respect. In discovering a case such as this one, it allows loved ones to know what may have happened to their sibling for example. Though, it also allows DNA technology to improve, as, with cases such as these where DNA can be difficult to obtain, an improved system will allow for it to be obtained easier with better results.
I thought that Dan Barry’s article, “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to Do With Children's Remains?” was overall very thorough in explaining the case. It was equally interesting and informative to read. Although, he did not explain the forensic side in detail as much as what happened to the children and why this happened.
3 comments:
Liam Grealy
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics
March 1 2018
Current Event #17
Barry, Dan. “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to Do With Children's Remains?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/world/europe/tuam-ireland-lost-children.html.
In this current event article, Michelle was able to accurately summarize the article, “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to Do With Children's Remains?” This article was mostly about a case in Ireland where the Catholic nuns ran a home for unwed mothers buried many bodies of young children. Michelle did a good job touching upon the important point of this article, describing how DNA allows people to know what may have happened to their loved one. In addition to this, Michelle was able to talk about the relevance of this article, human rights and proper respect towards and the dead are ignored in our world today. A last thing Michelle did well, was accurately criticize what the author could have done to make the article better. I agree with Michelle and saying that the article was too vague and she could have summed up the important points better and included more detail.
Although Michelle did a good job addressing the main points, I think she could have gave more details in his summary. Another thing Michelle could have done was improve his grammar and format of paper. One last thing that Michelle could have worked on was add additional information on the topic, although she did a good job summarizing it, I had to go back into the article to clear up any questions I had about the article.
One thing I was shocked with from reading this article and review was the extent that was taken to hide these remains and how these unwed women put this much effort into hiding a pregnancy that they would kill their own child.
I thought Michelle did an excellent job of incorporating quotes from the article into her review. I also thought her critique addressed what seemed to me like the most important flaws in the article- namely that it didn’t have enough forensic explanation. A third thing that she did really well is explain the entire thing very thoroughly while still keeping the review to a brief and manageable length.
Something I think Michelle could have done better is explain why this happened, since she says the article went into detail about it but her review doesn’t really make it clear why these children died and why their bodies were disposed of in such a way. I also think it’s not clearly stated how these events were an abuse of human rights, although the part about it being disrespectful towards the dead was quite plain.
I think the most shocking thing about this case is not one detail in particular but the idea as a whole and the fact that something like this was going on at all.
This week my classmate Michelle did a current event on “Agonizing Question for Irish: What to do With Children’s Remains?” by Daniel Barry. The article that was printed in the New York Times, writes about what Irish people should do with the bodies of kids who were born out of marriage and buried by leaders of the Catholic run community homes for the impoverished in Ireland. The first thing that stunned me reading this article was the number of children who died. The article declared that just about 800 kids died within the mother-child home, however, a majority of the children lacked correct burial records. The second issue that appalled me was that not only did they treat the mother and children within the home badly, but once children got to foster parents, they were usually abused. Finally, I thought Michelle did an excellent job transitioning from the facts to her take on the story.
Although this current event was fascinating and well done, there were two things I felt Michelle could've done to create this story more comprehensible for the reader. The primary thing she could have done was added more background information to the article. This might have conveyed the purpose of this text nicer. Lastly, even though she did touch on the forensics aspect of the investigation I felt she could have added more information to what specific processes, and perhaps gave her opinion on what the investigators should do.
This was a really interesting article to read. It shows how far we've come as a society where children before a marriage does not really matter. I was aware of situations like this happening before in catholic run impoverishment homes, however reading this article helped me understand the situations better, though it took a far darker outlook.
Post a Comment