Survivor Colleen Anderson and campaigner Michael Donovan of Roscrea also spoke to a German TV film crew from the ARD network, who are making a documentary about the former mother and baby home that inspired the Oscar-nominated movie Philomena.
Sean Ross Abbey was operated as a home by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary from the 1930s to the 1970s. Records show that 1,090 babies died there, along with 23 women aged 18 upwards. The religious order has provided 269 death certificates.
Colleen was born in Sean Ross Abbey in 1965. Like many survivors, her story is a painful one to relive, but she hopes the Irish government can provide more answers with a thorough investigation.
“My mom was 15 and she was the victim of rape,” she said. “She had me at 16 at Sean Ross. I was with her. She was here for a year and then she left me there in Sean Ross until I was two and a half.”
Colleen was sent by a nun, Sister Hildegard - portrayed in Philomena, and who was the head of forced adoptions - to live with the nun’s niece in Chicago. Colleen moved back to Ireland seven years ago and campaigns for the survivors of mother and baby homes.
“I was sent to her niece, and my adopted mom was schizophrenic, unmedicated, so there was a lot of abuse for me growing up. I went to go look for my mum when I was 28 - my mother here in Ireland, my birth mom."
Colleen met her mother at Christchurch in Dublin in 1999, thanks to help from Barnados. Her mother had a husband at the time, who was not Colleen’s father. She never knew who he was due to the violent circumstances of her conception.
Colleen only met he mother once. The woman died 10 years later.
The We Are Still Here survivors group, led by Mr Donovan and Limerick woman Ann Connolly, have called for the full Angels Plot to be investigated where scans have shown underground ‘anomalies’. Human bones have been found at the site.
“I believe they put a hold on it,” said Colleen in relation to the investigations. “They only did a certain percentage of their excavating and then they stopped.
“Basically, from my understanding, they said there was no reason to go further. but there has to be reasons to go further because there are still babies out there that are not named. They are not found.”
All babies, past and present, should be recognised to give closure for the families, said Colleen. An underground tank may contain human remains, such as at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Galway.
The unaccounted-for 844 babies and mothers “are somewhere here”.
“I think it would be fair for the people out here to be heard,” added Colleen.
Meanwhile, Ms Connolly and others have erected a nine-foot high poster, highlighting the 1,090 babies’ deaths which occurred while the religious order was in charge of Sean Ross during four decades. The poster contains 1,000 faces, about one for each child.