In the previous episode of The Woman in the Wall, we saw that Aoife Cassidy’s body was missing, and Lorna had no clue how it had vanished all of a sudden. Lorna, after finding the death certificate of her daughter, lost all hope, and she didn’t know if she should just give up on her quest or go after the perpetrators and bring their atrocities to light. Detective Akande, on the other hand, was getting too personally involved in the entire scheme of things because he, too, was from a mother-and-baby home. He didn’t remember any kind of atrocity being committed against him, but he wanted to find out whether whatever these women were saying about Father Percy was right or not.
Meanwhile, Niamh was in talks with people because she wanted the state to recognize the convent, where Lorna and others had stayed, as a laundry. She wanted them to accept that they had tortured the women who were there and issue a formal apology at least. But after Lorna’s involvement in Father Percy’s and Aoife’s cases came to light, Niamh was told to keep her distance from Lorna and not give the state any excuse for putting the character of women present there in question.
Spoiler Alert
What Did Lorna Find Out About The Convent?
Lorna had the death certificate of her daughter in her hand, but she wanted to see where she was buried. She went to the graveyard and started searching for the grave of Agnes Brady, but she couldn’t find one. She went to the church and asked them to check their records and find out where her daughter had been taken, what had happened to her, and where she was buried. But the church didn’t have any sort of record of Agnes Brady.
The father told Lorna to keep faith in God, and that’s when Lorna lost her cool. She told the father that for all those years when she was going through that trauma, she couldn’t find even the shadow of God in the convent. Her baby was taken away from her, and her mothers died because of what they were subjected to by the sisters of the Seven Joys. Yet those sisters roamed free and called themselves the flag bearers of Christianity. Lorna said that even if God existed, he never stepped foot in that convent because, had he been there, he would have done something about what was happening there.
Lorna told the father about how the sisters kept the babies, who had little chance of survival, in a particular room, which they referred to as the dying room. She said that the sister just left the babies in that room and waited for them to die. She said that Amy had told her about that room, but she didn’t believe her back then, but now, after seeing what the church was capable of, she was pretty sure that Amy was telling the truth.
In The Woman in the Wall Episode 4, Lorna went to the county archives as the father had told her that the church didn’t have all the records and maybe she could find something about her daughter there. Lorna trespassed in the county as she wasn’t authorized to otherwise search the archives. Lorna had procured around 300 death certificates from Aoife’s hideout, but only three names were mentioned in the records, and the rest were unaccounted for. So that meant no one knew what happened to the 300-odd babies, as no record of their existence or death was present.
What Happened Between Sisters Eileen And Lorna?
Lorna was not going to give up before she found out where her daughter was buried, and she immediately went back to the same place that had given her a lifetime of trauma to deal with. Lorna met Sister Eileen in the convent and asked her what had happened to her daughter. Eileen, in her patented brutish manner, told Lorna that just because she had given birth to a baby didn’t mean that she was worthy of being called a mother. Lorna was still intimidated by Eileen, and her presence always brought back memories of those times when Lorna was staying there. Lorna wanted to retaliate and give a befitting reply to sister Eileen, but her subconscious mind was somewhat trained to obey and keep quiet due to the years of systematic conditioning she had gone through. Sister Eileen shut her up and told her that she herself wasn’t able to recognize her baby when she was given a chance to.
Sister Eileen knew how to play with someone’s mind, how to manipulate, and how to gaslight someone. Eileen called Sergeant Aiden and told him to come and take Lorna with him. Sister Eileen told Aiden that she was not going to press charges as if she were doing Lorna a huge favor. Aiden took Lorna with her to the police station, and that’s when she gave him the list of babies about whom there was no record in the archives. Lorna pleaded with Aiden to do something about it this time. She reminded him of a time when Clemence had run away from the convent, and Aiden had caught her and brought her back.
Aiden said in his defense that his hands were tied as even the families of the girls didn’t want to accept them back. But deep down, Aiden knew that there was no justification for not taking any sort of action against the perpetrators. Actually, both of them were not wrong in their stance, as a freshly recruited police officer could not change the system even if he wanted to whereas Lorna had the right to be disappointed in the law enforcement authorities letting her down. Aiden knew that if he raised his voice against the church, the consequences were not going to be good. But now the times had changed, and Lorna wanted Aiden to redeem and rectify the mistakes that he had made in the past and, for once, fearlessly raise his voice against people like Sister Eileen.
Who Was Father Bernard Rice?
After Detective Akande had broken into Lorna’s house without any warrant, Sergeant Aiden made up his mind that he was not fit to lead the investigation. He asked Akande to immediately leave for Dublin and stop meddling in local matters in Kilkinure. But Akande knew that until he got answers, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He was himself born in a mother-and-baby home, and he wanted to know what Father Percy was up to and if he was the demon that Lorna and others perceived him to be.
The first breakthrough that Akande made was when he came to know that his parents had been asked by Father Percy to get in touch with the Sacred Shepherd adoption agency back in 1989, which meant that the state records were wrong where they stated that the agency was closed down in 1979. It meant that the agency was operating underground and was still pretty much active after a decade of officially closing. A decade meant that hundreds and thousands of children were illegally given for adoption, and Akande knew that if he was able to prove it, it would probably be the biggest scam in the history of the country. He found out about Father Bernard Rice, who overlooked proceedings at the Lazarus house, and he knew Father Percy quite well.
Father Percy had always said that he knew nothing about the Lazarus house, but now Akande knew that he was lying to him because he didn’t want him to connect the dots. Akande confronted Bernard Rice and, in a way, made an allegation against him, which obviously he didn’t take very well. People like Bernard Rice still enjoyed a lot of power, and he immediately called Akande’s superior and asked her to take action against him. Akande was asked to take a leave for a few days because his superior didn’t want the matter to escalate. Akande realized at that moment that he was trying to wage a war against a very powerful institution. The government might be running the country, but it was people like Eileen, Father Percy, and Bernard Rice, who pretended to be messengers of gods, who pulled the reins from behind the curtains.
Was Lorna’s Daughter Still Alive?
During The Woman in the Wall Episode 4’s ending, Akande asks his mother to tell him what she knew about the Lazarus house. That’s when his mother told him that the house had a room where they kept all the black babies, and it was referred to as the reject room. Akande’s parents had rescued him from there and given him the best of lives. Akande realized how wrong he had been to believe his entire life that Father Perry was the noblest man to walk the face of the earth.
Akande went to the national archive and found out something that shocked him beyond any measure. He started understanding the game a little bit, and he realized that people like Bernard Rice and his sister Eileen were scared because he was moving in the right direction. In the archives department, he found his own death certificate, and he immediately left for Kilkinure because he wanted to give this information to Lorna. Lorna saw the death certificate, and she started to laugh frantically. So basically, it could be concluded that Lorna’s daughter was still alive and would have been given to someone by the convent.
Akande had gone back to the Lazarus house, and he fell into the tunnel, of which he had visions in his sleep. He knew that something had happened there, and unless and until he brought the perpetrators to light, he was not going to stop. In the upcoming episodes, we will get to know what has happened to Aoife—if she is dead or alive and if Lorna has killed her or not. Detective Akande will hopefully be able to find some evidence that implicates the church and exposes the years of malpractice carried out by them in the name of religion.
