Situation Overview

Institutions,
Hidden Graves

Ireland's mass grave cases centre on the legacy of Catholic Church–run Mother and Baby Homes — institutions where unmarried women were confined and their children subjected to neglect, illness, and profound stigma. Eighteen such homes and County Homes operated across Ireland between 1922 and 1998, run by religious orders including the Bon Secours Sisters, the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts, and the Sisters of Mercy.

At Tuam in County Galway, local research uncovered the deaths of nearly 800 children between 1925 and 1961, without burial records. Excavations later confirmed that many had been buried in underground chambers originally associated with sewage treatment. At Sean Ross Abbey, investigators confirmed infant burials in the site's so-called Angels' Plot, though the full extent of burials there remains unresolved. At Bessborough — one of the largest homes, with over 900 recorded infant deaths — the location and extent of burials remains contested and only partially resolved.

The state responded to Tuam with the Institutional Burials Act 2022, creating a dedicated office to oversee excavation, recovery, and respectful reburial. Work began there in July 2025 — a landmark effort to address institutional violence hidden in plain sight for decades.

Mother and Baby Homes are one category among several in Ireland's mass grave landscape, each with a distinct history and investigative shape. Magdalene Laundries — a parallel Church-run system confining women rather than mothers specifically — produced their own mass grave at High Park, Dublin, where 155 women were exhumed in 1993. Industrial schools, where children were transferred after leaving Mother and Baby Homes, present cases like St. Brigid's in Loughrea, where no burial records exist at all. Older still are Ireland's Great Famine mass graves at 19th-century workhouse sites — a different era and cause of death entirely, and one the Bon Secours Sisters initially tried to misattribute the Tuam remains to. And separately, the Disappeared — 17 people abducted and secretly buried during the Troubles — represent an active, ongoing case with its own confidential recovery process and 4 people still missing. These are noted below as sites Khthon has identified but not yet built full casework on.

GEOINT Methodology

Confirming Sites
Decades Later

Ireland illustrates a different access problem than Khthon's conflict-zone casework: the sites are physically reachable, but the evidence is buried under decades of institutional silence and rebuilt landscape. Khthon leans on historic records and imagery layering, combined with survivor and witness testimony.

• ◈Historic map and LiDAR overlay. At Tuam, layering historic Ordnance Survey maps and architectural records over drone and LiDAR imagery identified surface disturbances consistent with the underground chambers later confirmed to hold remains.
• ◈Cross-referencing death and burial records. The Tuam case itself was built this way — cross-referencing recorded child deaths against burial records at local cemeteries surfaced nearly 800 children with no corresponding grave.
• ◈Structural and layout comparison. At Sean Ross Abbey, coffin evidence confirmed burials within the recognised Angels' Plot boundary, but the question of whether all children who died there are accounted for within it remains open.
• ◈Survivor testimony. Aging witnesses hold knowledge of practices and locations — particularly at Bessborough — that may never otherwise surface. Their memories, combined with geospatial analysis, bridge the gap between ground evidence and the wider reckoning now unfolding with the Church.