Tony Kelly

Life story of 'care' system survivor to be told in film

A CAMPAIGNER for survivors of State and institutional abuse, who was fostered as a boy in east Mayo, is having his life story turned into a film.

Born in Dublin, Tony Kelly spent 16 years in nine different foster homes and institutions, coming to Swinford when he was 5½, where he was fostered by a family in Carracanada.

At 16, he was on the road for Manchester and it was in the UK that he was to forge a career in wrestling.

Dublin-based Tony is a regular visitor to Swinford and Charlestown where he made lasting friendships.

Now, documentary filmmaker, producer and director of Aries Productions in Connecticut, Margaret Costa, is producing a film about his life. It will première in the US early in 2022 and then Ireland before going on general distribution.

Over the years Tony fought to find out who he is, meeting brick walls and uncovering a tangled mess where he had five different dates of birth. At one stage he received an instruction that he had 'done very well' for himself and to move on.

Eventually, he did find out who his parents were, and he has known the joy of belonging to a family when he was welcomed home by the siblings he never knew he had.

Tony pictured in Cashel National School, Swinford.

Tony and Margaret Costa's paths crossed when she was in Dublin when she premièred the film My Name is Joan, the story of a woman who discovered she was born in a mother and baby home. On hearing Tony's story, she said his life also had to be told in film.

She recently visited Ireland for filming. The first place Tony brought her to was the mass children's grave in Castlepollard.

Finding themselves three miles from where his parents came, they visited the house where his mother worked and then a house where a photograph was taken on the Sunday that a priest took her to Dublin. She was just showing signs of pregnancy and was covering her tummy with her left hand.

“As we pulled up beside the house, a protected building (the old parochial house), Margaret turned to me and said 'I was in that shop across the road'. It turned out that it was the same village where the girl in her last film met her mother and relations.”

Redress 'insulting'

Tony Kelly is a founder member of United Survivors Group, a pressure group that works in partnership for the common good of all survivors of State and institutional abuse.

The recent offer of compensation to survivors of mother and baby homes was, he said, 'insulting to those who suffered'.

People who spent less than six months as infants in the 'care' of homes were omitted from the redress scheme.

Said Tony: “Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman says that a child of five months and 30 days would not remember anything, but a child of six months and one day would remember everything that happened to it. He forgot about the damage to the mother and the child when you take the child away from the mother.”

Tony is one of the survivors who is entitled to nothing, apart from an enhanced medical card.

Reared in nine different settings, working on the farm where he was fostered and working with the council at 14, Tony asks: “How did the State look after my welfare as a child? I was physically, mentally and sexually abused throughout my early life.”

Moved around from one place to another, he was denied access to his records. He has spent his life fighting to find out who he is and campaigning for people who suffered abuse while in care.

He waited until his 73rd birthday to get his first birthday card for 'a special brother'.