A forensic team is digging up a former home in a desperate search for the remains of almost 800 babies and children.
A historic excavation is finally taking place on the site of a 'mother and baby home' in Tuam, Ireland, that closed more than six decades ago.
Painstaking research by local historian in County Galway, Catherine Corless, has revealed up to 798 children died at the home for unmarried mothers between 1925 up until its closure in 1961.
Many of the youngsters who died at the institution are believed to have been discarded into a former sewage tank, referred to as 'the pit' according to Corless.
Of the 798 children that died, just two were officially buried in a nearby cemetery with the rest presumed to be laid to rest in a mass grave at the site without a coffin or a gravestone.
Her findings in 2014 shook the country and the world, and highlighted a dark chapter in mid-century Ireland when Catholicism shunned 'illegitimate' births and denied the children baptism and a Christian burial.
The research on the site dates back to 1975 when two 12-year-old boys discovered the septic tank, reportedly full to the brim with human bones, but shrugged off the remains as belonging to the Irish famine in the 1840s.
"I'm feeling very relieved," Corless told Sky News ahead of the excavation, which could take as long as two years to complete.
"It's been a long, long journey. Not knowing what's going to happen, if it's just going to fall apart or if it's really going to happen."
St Mary's home was run by Catholic nuns and took in women dealing with the then associated 'shame' of having a child out of wedlock.
Ireland was home to at least 10 such institutions, taking in around 35,000 single women across the decades where the moms were often separated from their children or their offspring was forcibly put up for adoption.
Death records at the Tuam center list many of the children died from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis, which were rife at the time, but an inquiry in 2021 unearthed an 'appalling level of infant mortality' in such homes across the country with around 9,000 children dying across 18 institutions.
The inquiry prompted the Irish government to make a formal state apology with Taoiseach Micheal Martin stating that 'we had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction'.
The Sisters of Bon Secours, a religious order of Catholic nuns who operated the Tuam home, also extended their 'profound apologies' and offered monetary compensation.
They also admitted youngsters were 'buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way' at the site.
Corless added: "The church preached to look after the vulnerable, the old and the orphaned, but they never included illegitimate children for some reason or another in their own psyche.
"I never, ever understand how they could do that to little babies, little toddlers. Beautiful little vulnerable children."
Now, the mission is to identify as many of the remains as possible with DNA testing and to give each child a dignified burial.
