Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business (29 page)

In March, Ireland got a new Government – a Fine Gael- Labour coalition. Alan Shatter, an expert on family law and long-time critic of the chaotic nature of Ireland’s adoption legislation, was appointed Minister for Justice. On the appearance of the first edition of
Banished Babies
in 1997, Mr Shatter, then a backbench TD, wrote a letter of congratulations. ‘On a personal level,’ he told me, ‘I have found the lethargy shown by the State in addressing the issue of access to original birth records and the provision of information to facilitate those sent abroad to trace their origins extremely frustrating.’ In the new administration too, Frances Fitzgerald – another forceful critic of past adoption practices – was given the first ever full cabinet post as Minister for Children. ‘It is universally accepted,’ she had told the Dáil in 1997, ‘that denial of access to information about one’s origins is denial of a basic human right... These cases coming to public attention reveal considerable human unhappiness and heartbreak, and the minister must now introduce measures to deal with this. We must have action at official level.’
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With two ardent champions of adopted people’s ‘right to know’ now occupying the very positions from which change must come, radical reform seemed possible. The ball was finally at their feet. But, yet again, the ball has been kicked into touch. Questioned on
Today with Pat Kenny
on RTÉ radio shortly after coming to power, Ms Fitzgerald indicated she might legislate for
future
adoption rights, but would do nothing for people adopted in the past. ‘I think you can bring in tracing legislation,’ she said, ‘not going backwards but from current best practice going forward that the child would have access to birth certs, to detailed information.’ And she acknowledged how badly this would go down among the people whose cause she had seemed to support 15 years earlier: ‘There will be people who will be very disappointed hearing that,’ she told RTÉ.
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One of them was Grainne Mason who immediately wrote to the papers: ‘I know the hurt, upset and sheer devastation this decision will bring to the thousands of adopted adults who are searching... Our mothers carried us for nine months, gave birth to us, cared for us for days, weeks, months and, in some circumstances, years before we were given up for adoption and to be told that we will not have a right to know her identity is simply not right. We are not asking for her bank details, credit card account, alarm code or passwords, just her name and where she (and indeed, we) come from. Is this too much to ask for?’
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Speaking in the Dáil on 21 July 2011, Ms Fitzgerald seemed to indicate that her thinking on all of this was dictated by the complexities of 1998 Supreme Court judgment which found that unmarried mothers whose children were given up had a constitutional right to privacy. ‘Legislation to provide for information and tracing,’ she said, ‘is in preparation within my department and is a priority.’ But then came the inevitable rider: ‘This is a sensitive and complex area, and it will be necessary for the legislation to balance the constitutional rights of mothers whose children were adopted with those of adopted people seeking to trace their birth families.’ The claim that the matter is ‘complex’ is one that was rejected nearly fifteen years previously by an acknowledged leading professional in this area. ‘I want to nail the suggestion that this is a hugely complex issue,’ the expert said. ‘It is an issue that has been properly and adequately addressed in a variety of other countries with the degree of insight and sensitivity...’ He went on, ‘I urge the Minister to proceed hastily with bringing the necessary legislation before the House.’
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The speaker on that occasion was family lawyer, now Justice Minister, Alan Shatter.

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Many adopted people and natural mothers who continue to feel frustrated by the entire system had hoped that the 1998 judgment, which they see as seriously flawed, might have been challenged rather than taken as gospel.

It may seem astonishing that fifteen years after the American adoption story first broke, putting the whole adoption information issue onto the political agenda as never before, there has been so little advance. Legal obstacles and concern for the ‘sensitivities’ of all involved may indeed play a role, but in continually prevaricating over access to information that might help reunite adult adopted people and their natural mothers, the State and the adoption societies are also protecting themselves. It is now clear that not everything in the past was done in a legal and above-board manner. The conditions in which many young mothers ‘consented’ to the adoption of their children could well mean the consent itself had no legal validity. Others never signed consent documents at all, but had their signatures forged. Yet consent – and informed consent at that – has always been a fundamental requirement in Irish adoption law since the first Adoption Act came into force in January 1953. On the other side, there are adopted people returning with unhappy stories to tell, of adoptions that did not work, stories that might raise awkward questions about how individual adoptions were arranged and how unsuitable people managed to acquire children, particularly when the State had the final say before adoption passports were issued. Other adopted people have learned from their adoptive parents that considerable sums of money were sent to the nuns back in Ireland, a practice that has never been acknowledged or accounted for by the recipients who fear being accused of ‘selling’ the babies in their care. And, again, the State has never shown any interest in investigating this aspect of the baby business.

Under all these circumstances, the prospect of aggrieved but frequently submissive natural mothers getting together with unabashed and confident adult adoptees to ‘compare notes’ cannot be a welcome one for agencies – whether of Church or State – whose past practices could not withstand close scrutiny. By keeping mothers and offspring apart, a multitude of past sins, errors and shoddy practices by all those involved can be kept from view.

In case anything written here be thought of as insensitive to the feelings of natural mothers who are still desperately trying to keep their secrets, it should be said that contemporary research suggests a greater openness on the part of natural mothers than is frequently assumed. In one major investigation, three out of every four natural mothers contacted reacted with moderate to strong enthusiasm. Only one in six refused a reunion, but in the end, all were coaxed round. Other studies suggest that only one natural mother in 10 will refuse to meet her offspring, and for most of these mothers the reasons are fear of rejection and feelings of guilt rather than an absolute desire for secrecy.
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Anecdotally, too, there is considerable evidence to suggest that natural mothers who at first resisted contact have experienced great relief once they have changed their minds. Gentle persuasion, and an opportunity to discuss issues with their peers – rather than the dissuasion some Irish adoption societies are believed to have engaged in – can be the essential ingredient.

For many, if not most adopted people, the purpose of their search is not to establish a permanent relationship with their natural mother, but more modestly to find out the circumstances of their birth and adoption and, if possible, something of their family health history. They feel they need such information so as to move on in their lives. There is no doubt that many searches and reunions do not have happy outcomes, but these can rarely be predicted. Nor, adopted people feel, can the danger of unhappy outcomes in general be used by those in control of information as a justification for withholding it in all cases. As one person put it: ‘We are seeking the
truth,
and if the truth is bad news, well so be it, it’s still better than a sugar coated lie.’

The culture of secrecy, which is proving so hard to overcome, also protected men of course. It is conveniently forgotten that for every shamed natural mother there was an anonymous natural father, most of them desperate to cover their tracks. How many of these men occupied positions of power in relation to the women they made pregnant? How many were employers? How many men of the cloth? How many politicians? How many were guilty of incest? How many of sexual assault and rape? How many were other women’s husbands? In the production of tens of thousands of ‘illegitimate’ children in Ireland during these years, how many sexual taboos were broken? And in the determination to keep the doors locked on the adoption files, how many male – and prominent male – reputations were still being protected?

In Ireland, where the Church-induced culture of secrecy probably went deeper and lasted longer than elsewhere, the tendency for natural mothers – especially those from the earlier years – to remain hidden may well be stronger than research suggests it is elsewhere. Some of the mothers are already dead – as adopted people returning from America have discovered – their pain never acknowledged, their secrets never shared. And as the first edition of this book stated at its conclusion:
unless something is done in the very near future to actively encourage and assist the process of reunion, many more of the now elderly natural mothers won’t live long enough for their adopted children to find them.
In the intervening years this, sadly, has come to pass in a great many cases, making the final words of the first edition even more compelling:
that it seems to be the unstated intention of those who continue to think up excuses for keeping information under lock and key to deny till they die.

Tables

Figures for Ireland’s foreign adoptions are far from definitive. The tables below are derived from a database constructed by the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1997. Because of overlaps and different methods of recording cases down the years, total numbers differ when calculated under different headings. It is important to note that the Department only kept records from the end of 1950 onwards. Approximately 170 entry visas were issued by the American embassy in Dublin between July 1949 and the end of 1950, but there is no record of how many children were taken or sent to America, or anywhere else, before July 1949. There is no record whatever of ‘illegitimate’ Irish children who were adopted in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or taken from those jurisdictions to other countries for adoption. The overwhelming majority (98%) of the recorded foreign adoptions were to America, but children were also sent to 16 other countries.

Table 1: Annual Total

Note:
The annual passport totals have been gathered from a number of Department of Foreign Affairs documents. Annual figures for ‘illegitimate’ births come from the Central Statistics Office. When the 170 US entry visas for July 1949 to the end of 1950 are added the total comes to 2,103.

Table 2: Destinations by Country