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THE SEARCH ***NEW***

The Search Gerry Moran 2 photo DSC01212-Edit Image Name: The Search Gerry Moran 2 photo DSC01212-Edit
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The Search Colin Brennan thumbnail_IMG_4997  (Colin Brennan for Press) Image Name: The Search Colin Brennan thumbnail_IMG_4997 (Colin Brennan for Press)
The Search Colin Brennan DSC04837-Edit-5 (1) Image Name: The Search Colin Brennan DSC04837-Edit-5 (1)

 

Forty years ago, two Irish men from mixed race backgrounds left the State’s Institutional care. In the decades that followed they’ve tried tracking pieces of their past.  Too often they’ve met hurdles or dead ends.  Now in their late 50’s, both men have renewed their detective work. The Search is their story of tracing lost mothers, brothers and what it means to be family.

Gerry Moran: ‘Being brought up in those schools, when older you feel rejected.  You’ve no family, no nothing.’

Colin Brennan:We were treated the same way as people treat dogs.  They take them from their mothers and separate the pups into different families: mother gone, brothers gone. It’s like a death…’

Gerry Moran and Colin Brennan are just two of many former residents of Irish Industrial Schools.  In the first fifty years of the new Irish state an estimated 170 thousand children spent time in institutional care.  Twenty years ago the experience of neglect and abuse in Ireland’s orphanages was exposed.  In the years since, the government apologised and a commission investigated.  New laws unlocked some but not all personal files. The Search for past connections still proves challenging.   As Colin Brennan says:

 ‘On a journey like this you don’t really know the end of the tunnel but if the questions are there all your life I believe you should go into that tunnel…’

Gerry Moran was born in the West of Ireland, although he had no information about his birth for many years.  He was placed in an Industrial School aged four months. For most of his adult life he thought he was an orphan.  His time in care was difficult:

 I was born in February and by June of that year, I was in Industrial School. It was as if I was branded there and then a criminal.  I remember being called blackie and nig-nog”

“You’d hope parents give kids away to have a better life but in the end of the day a child’s going to grow up and it needs to know about its past…’

When Gerry secured access to personal records, he was taken aback by what he learned.  He hopes his journey to America will bring him closer to a family he never knew:

‘I mean the shock of it: I know people now that are only meeting a sister they didn’t know, brothers they didn’t know…’

 ‘The journey to America to find out about my past has been a roller coaster.  It’s something I will remember forever…’

Colin Brennan was placed in care when he was five, along with two brothers.  Their Irish mother, Pauline, had returned to Ireland from Liverpool looking for shelter after a difficult marriage.  The three boys were place in Industrial School soon after:

‘I fully believe my mother came under pressure being a white woman having coloured children.  The phrase nigger-lover was shouted at her in the street even though I didn’t know what that meant at the time…’

 ‘Everybody really wants to know their family background. I’m just trying to figure out and make some sense of my life before my time is up—for my own mental sake…

Although Colin’s mother visited the boys in Ireland regularly, events in her childhood and after led to adult depression and hospitalisation.  Colin discovers she too had been raised in orphanages and foster homes.

 ‘The last time we were together as a family was in 1968, two months before our mother’s death’.

In 1969 the brothers were moved to different foster families: ‘I came home to the orphanage from school one day to find my brothers gone…’

For almost 50 years, Colin has been unsure of the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death, the catalyst for the brother’s fostering:

‘I’d love to go back to Liverpool where it all began.  I’d love to find out what really happened to my mother…’

The Search takes Colin Brennan and Gerry Moran on a journey towards lost family, their past and what it means to be Irish today…

Producer Director: Anne Roper