Peter Mulryan survived the Tuam Mother and Baby home and he believes his sister did too
Irish man Peter Mulryan believes his sister was illegally adopted to America, despite her being listed as deceased in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.
Read More: Tragic Tuam Mother and Baby home documentary airs in New York and Boston
Speaking with the Irish Mirror, Mulryan, himself a survivor of the notorious Tuam Mother and Baby Home, said that he hoped to find his long-lost sister during a recent visit to the US.
Peter’s sister, named as Marian Bridget Mulryan, is listed as one of the hundreds of babies who died and could potentially be buried in a septic tank at the mother and baby facility.
Read More: Emotional US screenings of "Tuam Babies" documentary hears from American-based survivors
However, Peter believes a lot of the records from that era were falsified, especially with so many illegal adoptions occurring from the home.
“I now firmly believe she is in America and was sold off,” said 75-year-old Mulryan.
“I was hoping to meet her over there during my trip, but there wasn’t a lot of time to make too many enquiries.”
Mulryan was stateside recently attending film screenings of a documentary about the infamous Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway, in which he is featured.
Read More: 796 Tuam babies to be exhumed from mass grave in Galway
Born in a Galway hospital to his unwed mother Delia, Peter Mulryan and his mother were moved to the Tuam Mother and Baby home in 1944. At the age of four, Peter was fostered out of the home.
Years later, he began to develop a relationship with his mother who spent the rest of her life institutionalized at a Magdalene Laundries.
Peter never knew about his sister until Catherine Corless, who bravely uncovered the massive scandal of the Irish mother and baby homes, made the connection between him and the records of another Mulryan born there.
Read More: Nuns stopped mother and baby home survivor saying goodbye to dying mother
In her research, Corless was able to locate a 1954 birth certificate for Marian, as well as a death certificate dated only nine months later.
Corless believes that Marian was among those tragically buried in a septic tank at the mother and baby home.
Peter, however, still holds out hope that perhaps his sister is still alive and unaware of her origins in Ireland.
Speaking of those who were illegally adopted from Irish mother and baby homes, Mulryan said: “They would have been adopted and sold to America and there was lots of different stories."
“A lot of them didn’t know their heritage or anything or where they were from because their name was changed and there was no paper trail, no passports.”
“The babies were handed to air hostesses in many cases and put on planes and taken to addresses in America.”
Read More: Tuam babies adopted in large numbers to US, says historian who broke the scandal
“Their names were changed and there was no paper trail. They don’t know who they are and they don’t know how to go about [getting information] and they’re nobody. At least we have our roots in Ireland but they have no roots attached to anywhere.”
These shadowy proceedings have led Mulryan to believe that his sister Marian could still be alive.
In 2017, Peter Mulryan recounted his story with Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show in Ireland:
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