Justice Still Eludes Greystones’ Westbank Orphans

Colm Begley South Beach 18FEB17

hen we spoke with Colm Begley back in February 2017, the man’s main hope was that the abuse which occurred in the Westbank orphanage would be recognised by the government.

Colm as a kid…

Run by the evangelical Adeline Mathers, children were robbed of their names at this Greystones home, kept close to starvation and when they weren’t being beaten for daring to steal an apple from the orchard they could find themselves being injected with unidentified liquids for simply wetting the bed.

Colm 2025

“There was no love there,” Begley states. “Only beatings.”

Campaigning for years to have Protestant children’s home in Ireland given the same legal recognition as their Catholic counterparts, Colm and 19 other former Westbank residents of the Greystones orphanage are calling on Taoiseach Simon Harris to finally acknowledge the wrong done to them as children, and to correct the wrong done to them as adults.

Westbank

The Westbank Orphanage Redress Campaign are battling against not only being excluded from the Mother And Baby Homes Commission of Investigation but also being denied access to the State’s residential redress scheme for children raised in institutions.

And they have two reports backing up their claim that Westbank survivors were “unfairly excluded”, with an Oireachtas joint committee recommending in 2022 that the Mother And Baby Institutions Payment Scheme should be extended to Westbank residents.

Adeline ‘Auntie’ Mathers

Another former Westbank resident fighting for recognition, Sidney Herdman says simply, “The Westbank Orphanage is a blot on the landscape of Wicklow“.

Having brought to protests to the church last year, it was the turn of Simon Harris’ constituency office in Bray last week.

Another survivor of Auntie Mathers’ smothering love, still living in Greystones and wishing to remain anonymous, had a simple message for Simon Harris.

“Open your eyes, open your ears,” she says. “Hear us. We are real people, and we are hurting.”

You can check out our 2017 video chat with Colm Begley here.