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Articles / 'Say goodbye to your baby': Heartbreaking stories of Ireland’s mother and ....

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on March 27, 2025, 06:28:06 PM »

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41597110.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJSbaNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcutTwv13IhteTlskJFiVqJ7K9fsXCwXEdoTKJPh-kusHBV_fIj0neC-kA_aem_B1ZlfpXKwK4P_EoB4yK09g

'Say goodbye to your baby': Heartbreaking stories of Ireland’s mother and baby home survivors
A UK bill could offer new hope to Irish mother and baby home survivors, but many still fight for justice, writes Alison O’Reilly

Sat, 22 Mar, 2025 - 06:00
Alison O'Reilly

More than 60,000 people went through the religious-run institutions in this country up until the final one closed its doors in the 1990s. When their time came to leave, many fled to the UK and beyond, in the hope of building a new life.  But their pain didn’t end there.  Women like Philomena Lee and Maggie O’Connor broke their silence in their later years to reveal the trauma they endured over losing their children to forced adoptions.  In recent weeks, a bill was introduced in the UK designed to help survivors of Ireland's mother and baby homes and who now live there to receive compensation.  Labour MP Liam Conlon and chair of the Labour Party's Irish Society, moved 'Philomena's Law', named after survivor and campaigner Philomena Lee.  He said survivors living in Britain have been deterred from making an application to the compensation scheme operated by the Irish Government out of fears they could "lose means-tested benefits and financial support for social care".

Mr Conlon told Britain's House of Commons: "Philomena is one of tens of thousands of women and their infant children who spent time in mother and baby homes across Ireland for the perceived sin of becoming pregnant outside of marriage.  The women were regularly used as unpaid labour and infant mortality was alarmingly high."

He said the women experienced "harsh conditions and mistreatment”.

The mother and baby home redress scheme was introduced by the last government to compensate survivors who spent time in such institutions. It finally opened for applications on March 20, 2024, and it was estimated that 34,000 survivors were entitled to compensation.  However, uptake on the €600m scheme has been nowhere near what was anticipated. The latest figures from the Department of Children show that up to Monday, March 10, some 6,250 applications have been received.  Almost 5,400 notices of determination have been issued to applicants 82% of which contain an offer of benefits. Applicants have six months to consider their offer before they need to respond, and to date 4,000 payments have been made or are in the process of being made.  While 'Philomena's Law' has been welcomed, survivors in Ireland want to see the terms of reference of the redress scheme extended to include those people who spent less than six months in a home, those who were hospitalised or 'boarded out' to families, and all of the homes included in the package.  The Irish Examiner spoke to three survivors who have been denied redress, and the families of those who died without ever being compensated.

'So basically, we can 'f' off'

Michael Byrne was born in the Tuam mother and baby home on July 22, 1957. He was transferred to Temple Hill in Dublin within weeks because of a disability in his leg.  Temple Hill, however, is not included in the redress scheme. Michael was adopted to a family in Boston in 1961 and said he is “lost for words” over the fact he is not entitled to compensation.  “The institution didn’t qualify, it’s a government decision, there is a list of homes that are getting compensation, so basically, we can ‘f’ off” he said.

“It’s not a financial point to make for me, it’s more that it is emotional.  I was in two different hospitals, the first was for three years and the other for eight months and there are no records for me, but I was in a home for years and not adopted until 1961, but yet it doesn’t qualify.  I didn’t apply for the scheme. What is the point, we were told it doesn’t qualify.  It's tough to find the right words to say exactly how it makes you feel. But it is insulting. I’ll be turning 68 this year, I’ve enough problems with my own government right now, the compensation would have been helpful along with my pension”.

'Say goodbye to your baby, you’ll never see her again'

Anastasia Fogarty was named after her mother when she was born in Bessborough in 1951.  “I was born in the January and stayed there until the following New Year’s Eve with my mother,” she said. “Then she was sent with me to Dublin."

At that stage, mother and daughter were forcibly separated.  "She told me, when I met her once years later, two nuns met her and brought her into a sitting room in a building and said, ‘say goodbye to your baby you’ll never see her again' and took me out of her arms.  She told me her life ended that day. From there I went through St. Patrick’s Guild, and my father paid money every month for me. My mother’s sisters paid for me too and my adoptive mother.  I was a year when I went to them, I was waiting two years before I was adopted.”

Even though Anastasia spent time in two different homes, she is only entitled to compensation for one.  “I applied for redress, and I got money for being in Bessborough. I was refused money for St. Rita’s [which is not included in the list of institutions covered] which is really unfair.”

'It has been stated, in bold, we don't matter'

Clodagh Malone was born in St Patrick's Navan Road in 1970. She told the Irish Examiner how “my birth mother presented herself in London to the Catholic Rescue Protection centre”.

“They had the police escort her and another girl (pregnant by a priest) onto the boat to Ireland.  My mother was incarcerated for four days at St. Patrick’s mother and baby home before my birth. I didn't apply for redress as it has been stated, in bold, we don't matter.  As a survivor from a religious-run institution, such institutions were supported and subsided by the State.”

She said you cannot “quantify or weigh the burden of trauma that was imposed upon vulnerable women and children”.

“Throughout our lives, we have been treated like an island cut off from the mainland. Yet again we're being rejected by our peers”.

This sense of injustice in how elderly survivors are being treated was echoed earlier this month when the Irish Examiner published 94-year-old Christina 'Chrissie' Tully’s plea to buy her council home in case her missing son returns to look for her after she dies.  Her story about facing death without ever getting answers about her son, who she believes was taken from her, brings into stark focus the age profile of those people who were terribly wronged and are still campaigning for justice and the families of those who have died without it ever being served.

'She died never seeing any justice'

Margaret ‘Maggie’ O’Connor was 92 years old when she died in a care home in Manchester on April 8, 2016 one year after the Commission of Inquiry into mother and baby homes was launched.  She had kept a secret from her family for more than five decades about her ‘bonnie baby’ girl. Maggie had been raped by a caretaker in the industrial school where she had lived since she was a child.  The nuns sent Maggie to the Tuam home where the infant was delivered, but sadly she died on June 6, 1943, from whooping cough.  “She never told anyone,” said her daughter Annette McKay who has campaigned for justice on behalf of her mother and sister for the past 11 years and is on the advisory board for the Director of the Tuam intervention.

“It wasn’t until she was 70 when she met her great grandchild, my grandson Jack, that she broke down in front of us. I went to her house the next day as I knew something was wrong and she was sobbing and sobbing.  She told me about the baby and how she had carried her around on her hip in the home, before the little one died and that was it, mum was thrown out of Tuam, and we don’t know where my sister is buried."

Maggie had dementia for 12 years and had spent her adult life on medication because of the trauma of her broken childhood.  Her own mother had died from sepsis on her ninth pregnancy and Maggie and her siblings were marched to Galway Courthouse and sent to Lenaboy Industrial School in Taylor’s Hill. The boys were sent to the Christian Brothers.  Once inside, Maggie worked like a slave for many years and at 16 she was raped by a man who worked in the home.  A year later she was sent to the Tuam mother and baby home where her baby Mary Margaret was born.  “Mum suffered all her life,” continued Annette. “If she saw nuns she would freak out.  She was a beautiful woman, the best dressed woman in Galway, but she died never seeing any justice whatsoever, and I believe her dementia was a blessing in many ways because she suffered so much and was always crying”.

When the Redress Scheme for Industrial Survivors was rolled out in the mid-2000s the board did not accept that Maggie was raped, and later claimed it was a consensual relationship.  “We knew she was raped by a married man with kids who lived on the grounds of Lenaboy, we never knew about baby Mary,” said Annette.

“Her barrister said she hit every milestone for damages but in the end, she received €38,000 for spending all her childhood and teenage years in an industrial home which ended in a pregnancy. The rape was not accepted.  She wanted to find her baby, but she became so unwell, I was glad in a way because she could have lived for another 20 years with that trauma, but instead, she didn’t remember.”

'I wish I had answers'

Former Tuam baby Desmond Lally died in the US in 2021 aged 75 years. He was born in Tuam on July 13, 1946, where he remained for five years and died a day before the final report from the Commission of Inquiry into mother and baby homes was published in January 2021.  He had suffered with poor health and trauma in the run-up to the end of his life.  Mr Lally had spent that later part of his life in the US and had little information about his identity but never gave up looking for his family as well as keeping up to speed with the progress of the commission’s work here. He later discovered, with the help of friends and distant relatives in Galway, he had four siblings in Ireland whom he was reunited with.  He recalled his first conversation with his brother on the phone from Ireland after he tracked them down.  At the time Des said: ‘He just answered the phone and said, ‘Dessie how are you?’ before he went on to tell me I had three half-sisters.  I cried for days afterwards.'

Des left the Tuam mother and baby home to be fostered out to a family where he worked on a farm.  "I was abused so badly," he said before he died. "It was a horrible experience. I was fostered, and I was moved from one home to another.  When I did try to find my identity, I never got my records. I wish I had answers. It bugs me a lot.  I don’t understand what happened in the home or who my mother was."

Des was a member of the Tuam Babies Family Group and had been trying to move home to Ireland where "his heart belonged".  Anna Corrigan whose mother had two babies in the Tuam home said he was “delighted” to be in touch with fellow survivors but wanted desperately to move home.  “He had set up a GoFundMe Page called ‘Yearning for Home’ to help him return to live in Galway.  He had suffered terrible abuse in the foster home and in Tuam. He said it was unbearable. He went into foster care and was beaten so badly, until he walked out at 16 years old and went to the UK.  Then he went to the US and stayed there for years and years. But his heart was always in Ireland.  He didn’t have the money to come home, and his Facebook page was flooded with heartbreaking messages after he died.  Des was a special person; he was very much loved by his friends and community and is missed.  It was so bitter sweet that he died the day after the commission’s final report. He dreaded the idea of not getting home to see out his final days."

Anna said he missed out on the State apology, the commissions' final report and the redress scheme.  "But most of all, he never got to come home to die, and that’s what he wanted most," she explained.

“These survivors are aging and justice delayed is justice denied, Des was denied his justice and that was very unfair on him.”

She didn’t see the end to this journey

In 2018, the Founder of Voice of Irish First Mothers, Kathy McMahon, 63, died at the gates of the UN, where she was going to speak about her life in the mother and baby homes.  She had set up the group in 2014, to support women who had their children taken by the nuns and she tried to have their voices heard.  While Kathy had fought for the mothers who lost their babies in the homes, she herself never got all her answers.  Her late partner Fintan Dunne said at the time: "She had a child taken from her and was able to stop her second child being taken.  She died at the gates of the UN, she took a turn and died. She was going in there to stand up for the mothers and the babies and all those who perished in every mother and baby home and she died at the gates of it. It is heartbreaking.  Kathy was a force to be reckoned with, she had fought so hard for truth and justice but never saw the State apology."

Kathy was just 18 years old when she was pregnant with her first daughter in 1974 in Dublin.  But she said that it was all ‘hush hush’ and she was sent to the Good Shepherd Convent in Dunboyne, Co Meath.  When she went into labour, she was taken to Holles Street hospital where she had her baby but when it came to her discharge, she was told her baby was gone.  Six weeks later Kathy was brought to a solicitor’s office in O’Connell Street to sign adoption papers. She said she was sick at the thought of it but had "no concept of what I was doing".

The second time she was pregnant when she was told by the nuns to give up her child she replied, "no way".

Her friend Sheila O’Byrne, whose only child was adopted from St. Patricks’ mother and baby home, said: “She had the strength the second time to say no, so she was strong, but she didn’t see the end to this journey, which is still going on. There are still so many things not resolved for the mothers and many have died before getting their justice.”

22

Articles / What DID they do to me in that orphanage?: Haunting question ANDREW PIERCE....

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on March 22, 2025, 05:21:38 PM »

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14524527/What-DID-orphanage-Haunting-question-ANDREW-PIERCE-left-saw-pictures-baby-time-uncovered-truth-birth-cruelty-nuns.html#newcomment

What DID they do to me in that orphanage?: Haunting question ANDREW PIERCE was left with after he saw pictures of himself as a baby for the first time and uncovered truth about his birth and the cruelty of the nuns

By ANDREW PIERCE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Published: 01:56, 22 March 2025 | Updated: 01:57, 22 March 2025

As I tore open the brown envelope, three small black-and-white photographs slipped from a single sheet of paper on to my desk. I gazed at them and thought my heart might miss a beat.  I was staring at a familiar-looking chubby child, barely a year old. He was smiling as he hung on to the playpen. Next to him was a cute blonde girl who didn’t look as happy.  I stared and stared. Another photo showed the same boy on a blanket on a lawn, playing with two other boys. The little blonde girl was there, too. The chubby infant was clearly me. I was incredibly moved: I’d never seen photos of me so young before.  The earliest I knew of was a picture of me aged two-and-a-bit in a red duffel coat and Rupert Bear trousers. That one had been taken in Nazareth House orphanage in Cheltenham shortly after I was introduced to the wonderful couple who adopted me.  Hurriedly, I read the handwritten letter that accompanied the photos. It was from Mrs Philomena Olver, who, coincidentally, lived in Bristol, where I was born in February 1961.  We’d talked the year before, when the hardback edition of my book Finding Margaret was published. She said she’d worked at Nazareth, my home for nearly three years, and remembered me. I thought that very unlikely and said so. Subsequently, Philomena had rooted out the old photos in her attic. Turning them over, she’d found my name written in ink: Patrick.  Yes, definitely me. Just a few weeks before my birth mother had taken me to Nazareth House, I’d been baptised Patrick James Connolly. It was my adoptive parents who’d changed my name to Andrew Pierce.  Philomena told me: ‘You were a shy little thing; you never said very much. I especially remember you because you never had any visitors, not like some of the others.’

That is not quite right, I told her. My birth mother Margaret Connolly, then living in Birmingham and working as a nurse, had visited me at the orphanage.  ‘Well, if she did, I never saw her,’ she said. ‘There was one girl who visited her child every day. She was a nurse, like your mother, but she rented a place opposite the orphanage so she could see her.’

Margaret, a devout Catholic, could also have visited more often had she put me in the Nazareth House home in Rednal, eight miles from Birmingham city centre. But she’d opted for an orphanage 60 miles away, where she was unlikely to be spotted by anyone she knew.  Her visits had then come to an abrupt halt after two-and-a-half years, when she consented to give me up for possible adoption.  Many years later, as I pored over official documents about my early life, I realised that she’d deliberately covered her tracks by giving only scant information about herself. Clearly, she wanted to ensure no one in her loving and supportive Irish Roman Catholic family could ever discover her secret.  As my book revealed, I did find Margaret again after a gap of 45 years and a tortuous search. Yet, to the very end of her life, she refused to tell me anything about my time in the orphanage or reveal who my father was. Even in her 80s, she was terrified that anyone would find out she’d had an illegitimate child.  But back to Philomena, herself an orphan who’d lived in various Nazareth Houses until the nuns sent her to Cheltenham at 15 to work in the nursery.  ‘I would play with you, talk to you and try to give you the love you were missing because you had been abandoned,’ she said.

‘If there were potential adopters, the nuns would always dress the baby or child in their finest. It was like Sunday best. When your [adoptive] parents came to see you, they put you in those long Rupert Bear checked trousers.’

What had become of the other children in the photos, I asked?

One of them showed a Nativity scene being gazed at by three boys named as Adrian, Nigel and Patrick – though I wasn’t sure about the one identified as me because he seemed too tall.  She didn’t know what had become of Adrian. Nigel had been moved to the Bristol Nazareth House in 1965 when the Cheltenham home closed, and was later adopted.  And little blonde Ann?

Philomena wasn’t sure. ‘Ann’s mother wanted to make a home for her little girl. But her parents, who were well-to-do, weren’t having any of it. So little Ann stayed in the system for a long time.’

I asked Philomena if she’d been aware of routine cruelty by the nuns and helpers. ‘I never saw any of that,’ she said. ‘I heard about it. But if a child wet the bed, there was a terrible hullabaloo.’

I’d been a bed-wetter, a habit that accompanied me when I was adopted. It took Betty and George, my mum and dad, several years to break it, even after I’d become a happy, integrated family member.  My birth must have been a brutal, emotional experience for my birth mother. There’d been no friends or family with her when she arrived in Bristol, heavily pregnant, at the end of 1960. A few weeks before I was due, Margaret had checked into St Raphael’s, a home for unwed mothers run by a Roman Catholic order of nuns.  Not only was Margaret a single pregnant woman in the harsh, unforgiving social climate of early 1960s Britain, but she’d also been brought up to believe that sex outside marriage was one of the gravest of sins. Having her baby in her home city of Birmingham, where she’d have risked public shame, would not have been an option.  For years, I’d assumed she must have been a gym-slip mum, but not a bit of it: Margaret was only three months from her 35th birthday when she had me. Had she fallen madly in love, I wondered, perhaps with a married man?

St Raphael’s, like many others of its kind, espoused a regime that was punitive, inflexible and often lacking in any empathy.  Unfortunately, I’ve hit a brick wall in trying to find out more as the file to my first temporary home has been closed until 2043 due to concerns that the publication of material could be too hurtful.  However, over the past 15 years, shocking stories have been emerging about violence and abuse in similar mother-and-baby homes. Some mums would go to the dormitory where the infants slept to give them their bottles, only to discover their babies were no longer there. Heartbreaking.  Some children were sent to Ireland to be put in care. Others dispatched as far afield as Australia. The mothers were often never told where their babies had gone.  Overlaying everything was a powerful sense of shame. Margaret would have felt it strongly at St Raphael’s and again at Southmead Children’s Hospital, where she gave birth to me. There, she was kept in a separate room from the married women, so they could avoid being ‘tainted’ by her sin. Unlike them, Margaret was presented with a birth certificate that stated my father was ‘unknown’. Did he perhaps live or work in Bristol?

Was that one of the reasons she’d chosen to have me there?

If so, she never told me.  At five weeks I was transferred to Nazareth House in Cheltenham, some 40-odd miles away.  I’ve always wondered: what were those first crucial years truly like for me? At the end of last year, I stumbled across a report marking the 120th anniversary of CCS Adoption in Bristol, the agency that handled my transition from orphanage to happy family life.  One of the sentences in this report said: ‘Previous residents of Nazareth Houses in Bristol and Cheltenham have reported mixed experiences and some complaints were raised…when reports of historical abuse, including being beaten and suffering sexual abuse from other residents and adult helpers, were in the Bristol Evening Post.’

I quickly found the articles, testimonies from people who’d been in the homes at the same time as me. Chillingly, some had been toddlers, too.  Again and again, there were reports of children being beaten for wetting the bed. Punishments included being forced to sit in a galvanised steel bath while two assistants poured buckets of cold water over the child’s head. Urine-sodden sheets were wrapped round their legs or neck.  At night, there were checks to ensure all the children slept on their backs with their arms crossed so that, according to one person’s story, ‘if we died in our sleep, we would go to heaven’.

Teresa Smith, who was still living in Bristol, was 41 when she spoke to the newspaper about the ‘ritual of abuse’ that she had undergone. I was 40 at the time, so a contemporary of hers. ‘With the exception of one nun,’ she said, ‘their role seemed to be to punish. One of my most vivid memories was being locked in the cupboard and spending hours in the dark. I saw nuns grab hold of girls’ hair and pull them upstairs, hitting them with a hairbrush.’ John, 55, spoke of a ‘regime of fear’, saying: ‘The nuns or helpers would pull sheets off the bed and if your hands and arms weren’t folded, you had to kneel on stone floors. If you wet the bed, you were put in a bath of cold water and scrubbed with disinfectant.  One of our duties was to clean a 200ft stone hall floor. There would be two or four boys, scrubbing on our knees. Standing above us would be another boy who’d swing a broom to ensure we didn’t put our head up and stop cleaning.  One of our helpers, not a nun, was particularly cruel. She told my brother and I that our mother didn’t want us and nor did they.’

Then there was Arthur, who was sent to Nazareth House at three and remained there until he was 13. He, too, was scrubbed with disinfectant when he wet his bed.  ‘We had no protection, no cuddles or anyone to care for us,’ he said. ‘At night, I felt so lonely I cried.’

Michelle Daly, a former carer at the home, said she was shocked by what she’d seen. ‘Babies were neglected and the nuns only made an effort for visitors,’ she said.

She had painful memories of a five-year-old called Marie who was still in nappies: ‘Marie was left in a storage room and used to crash to the floor, banging her head, making it bleed. I bit my lip, hearing her screams in there.’

After the home closed in 1970, she tracked Marie down and, at 19, Michelle became the youngest woman in the country to adopt. She said: ‘Marie wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t been so utterly neglected. All they cared about was how clean the place was; no child was ever cuddled.’

Daniel, another resident, recalled. ‘Once, when I was angry, I flooded the bathroom. The nun stripped me naked in front of 100 boys and put me in a bath of icy water. Then she tied me to a shower and beat me with a stick which hung round her waist. I was nine.’ He also recalled being locked in a cupboard for a day at a time: ‘The nuns told us we were a curse on the world.’

Is this how I was treated during my most vulnerable years?

All I know is the stories have uncanny parallels with what I uncovered during regressive therapy with an eminent psychologist.  He’d put me under hypnosis so he could try to take my unconscious mind back to the orphanage. And, during these sessions, I’d heard a child crying and had known instinctively it was me.  There was cloth (a sheet?) wound so tightly round my legs that I couldn’t move them and the strong smell of urine. Then I appeared to be shivering in an icy bath, held down by strong hands.  Did being wrapped in urine-soaked sheets explain why my adoptive parents said I came to them with dreadful sores on my legs?

When I later told my adoptive sister about the regressive therapy, she had more to add. ‘You told us the nuns used to shut you in the cupboard,’ she said.

Did Margaret know any of this?

No I’m certain she was oblivious to any ill-treatment in the orphanage. For one thing, she probably visited only a couple of times a month at most because of her busy work schedule as a nurse in Birmingham. For another, the nuns would have ensured I was on best behaviour for any visitor.  What gives me heart now is that I look so happy in the photos Philomena sent me. At the point those photos were taken, Margaret was still visiting me and had no intention of giving me away. She was still clinging to the noble idea that one day she’d be able to create a loving home for me.  The photos have also helped underline how difficult it must have been for Margaret to walk away from me. I was a toddler walking, talking, laughing and she’d had time to forge a loving relationship with me.  For her, everything changed when a man called Patrick Lennon asked her to marry him. She suddenly faced a choice: walk away from me – or lose the man who offered her a chance of security, happiness and legitimate children (she went on to marry Lennon and have three more children).  I completely understand why she made the decision she did. But as I look at the photos, I also think that her wedding day must have been tinged with sadness.  Some of the orphanage’s residents still have nightmares and flashbacks. I don’t. What I do have now are three wonderful photos and three names: Adrian, Ann and Nigel. I hope that, by publishing their photos, maybe someone will recognise these children.  I’d love to meet them. To see if they remember much about the home. To find out if they, like me, have been astonishingly happy.  In the end, I was lucky Margaret gave me up for adoption. If she hadn’t met Lennon, I could have remained in orphanages for many years. I’d almost certainly have missed my chance to be adopted by Betty and George, who’d have found another lucky little boy to make their family complete.

Adapted from Finding Margaret, by Andrew Pierce (Biteback, £9.99), to be published in paperback on March 27.

© Andrew Pierce 2025. To order a copy for £8.99 (offer valid to 05/04/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

23

Articles / 'My search for my birth family blew my mind'

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on March 12, 2025, 12:14:53 PM »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9vyyqv39no

'My search for my birth family blew my mind'

Daisy Stephens BBC News

Published 9 March 2025

Bryan Urbick knew he was adopted from an early age.  Brought up in Seattle by a strict Catholic couple, Mr Urbick knew very little about his birth family.  But he had a nagging feeling that he did not "fit in" and almost six decades later when settled in Goring, Oxfordshire, he decided the time had come for him to find some answers.  Mr Urbick knew he was the result of an affair, and his mother, who had three other children, put him up for adoption to save her marriage.  But attempts to contact her in Washington state, which has strict laws about contacting birth family, were unsuccessful.  "I suspect she didn't want to relive the past," the 64-year-old told BBC Radio Berkshire.

"[But it was a] tough blow to be rejected again."

His search was reignited after the death of his adoptive mother.  After the funeral, a DNA test revealed he had a lot of cousins, which allowed him to figure out his father was a man called Boyd Carter.  One of Mr Urbick's newly discovered cousins, Craig Moe, told him he had grown up with his father, whom he called Uncle Boyd.  When Mr Moe came to visit him in January 2025, the Henley Standard covered the discovery - and from there, things started to snowball.  "The reporter rang and said, 'Bryan, I have the most amazing news'," said Mr Urbick.

A man had rung the newspaper saying Mr Carter had been a family friend.  The reporter put the two in touch and Mr Urbick discovered the man lived less than four miles away from him, in Whitchurch-on-Thames.  "It just blows my mind a bit that this would happen so close to us," he said.

Mr Urbick is still yet to meet the man who got in touch but said he had already learned so much about his father, who died in 2014.  He said he had discovered he was a perfectionist like him, that they both loved boats, and that their handwriting looked the same.  "And I have weird handwriting," he said.

But he said learning more about his father had been "emotional".  "I don't think he ever knew that I existed," he said.

He also learned his father had another son, who had died aged nine.  "I wish that I had been able to be a son to him as well," he said.

But despite this, Mr Urbick said finding out about his father had helped him feel connected to his birth family.  "I never fit and now I feel like, 'gosh, I fit somewhere', and that's rather exhilarating," he said.

24

General Discussion / Access to Records

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on March 08, 2025, 11:33:08 AM »

Please click on the link - https://www.independentpanel.truthrecoveryni.co.uk/access-records?fbclid=IwY2xjawI5CdxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZx__SfGRNSqPwPXnGN3PNFwoROBtCnKmrQLL9iv4a4r-p66mMiRg0_KDw_aem_eRWDJ3VOmc4lFhgJruhtoQ

25

Articles / Family hunt for relative born to Wigan teen at secret hostel in 1950s

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on March 04, 2025, 06:17:39 PM »

https://www.wigantoday.net/lifestyle/family-and-parenting/family-hunt-for-relative-born-to-wigan-teen-at-secret-hostel-in-1950s-5009690?fbclid=IwY2xjawI0HZZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSRkytzYn1GRfKJ__1Mu3IP6yZdTXlj0_G1ffQTzT298LrvkdqkO8T1CPw_aem_2bolrIcxmWOUpGEXoFl3vg

Family hunt for relative born to Wigan teen at secret hostel in 1950s

By Louise Bryning
Published 2nd Mar 2025, 15:45 GMT

A family are hoping to be reunited with a relative born to a Wigan teenager and adopted from a hostel for unmarried mothers in the 1950s.  The baby boy was born to a 16-year-old unmarried woman, who was sent to the hostel in Queen Street, Lancaster, by her shocked parents, who lived in Ashton-in-Makerfield.  The boy was born in December 1956 and was named Michael. However, the young Wigan mother, Dalphene, wanted his birth to be kept secret until she and his father, American serviceman John Vaughn, were both dead.  After giving birth, Dalphene trained as a nurse and the couple later married, moved to America and had three more children.  She died seven years ago and the siblings knew nothing about their older brother until their dad died last year when the secret was revealed.  "They were shocked and concerned, and all felt sorry for their mother as they had no idea that she had such a start in life," said Andy Anderton, Dalphene's younger brother.

He too had not known about his adopted nephew until he and Dalphene were sorting out some papers after their parents died.  "I found an adoption certificate and Dalphene promised me not to tell anyone until she and John had both died," said Andy.

The family believe Michael was the subject of a "forced adoption" and that the home was one of several countrywide, usually run by churches and religious organisations, at a time when children born to single women was frowned upon.  Only daughter Dalphene was the apple of her parents' eye, went to elocution and ballet lessons and attended grammar school.  Andy, now 80, was five years younger than his sister and was never told of her pregnancy though he does remember that, unusually, there was a lot of arguing and crying in the house around that time.  "The shame that her pregnancy would have brought on the family must have been unbelievable in such a small community where my dad was the manager of a wagon works," he said.

Andy does remember that a doctor and vicar were regular visitors and thinks they might have arranged to send Dalphene to Lancaster for the birth.  Andy recently visited the Queen Street building, which is being converted into flats. During the work, a chapel and Bibles were discovered.  The family are now searching for Michael, whose name was changed on adoption. They are using an adoption agency in Wrexham, where Andy lives, which has confirmed they've found Michael's adopted name and identified his adoptive parents.  "We are excited about the possibility of finding my nephew but realise that he might not know that he was adopted or might even be dead," Andy said.

"This is a story that needs to be told as young girls like my sister must have gone through hell."

26

Articles / Patsy Brown thought she’d never see her child again until a letter changed .....

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on February 26, 2025, 12:48:07 PM »

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/01/patsy-brown-thought-shed-never-see-her-child-again-until-a-letter-changed-her-life-forever

Patsy Brown thought she’d never see her child again until a letter changed her life forever

A single, Indigenous woman in 1971 changed her mind about adopting out her son. She believes she was deliberately deceived

It was through a cafe window that Patsy Brown finally glimpsed the man she’d thought of every day for 22 years.  He pulled up on a motorbike on a busy street in Brisbane’s inner-south, removing his helmet to reveal long dark hair and bright blue eyes.  This, surely, must be her son.  Patsy has rarely spoken about the heart-wrenching circumstances that separated her from her first-born child for two decades, but at 73, she says there is a kind of catharsis that comes from telling her story.  “I thought that opening up might help me,” she says.

“There’s still the guilt that lingers. And the regret.”

The Quandamooka woman had hoped to give evidence at Queensland’s truth-telling and healing inquiry on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) late last year, until the LNP dismantled the process five months after it began.  Patsy says she feels as if things are “going backwards” when it comes to understanding the issues affecting Indigenous people.  “There are people who just don’t care,” she says.

“They say ‘It’s the past, you’ve got to get over it’ but you can’t get over it until you’ve actually talked about it and had people empathise with you.”

Patsy recalls the first meeting with her adult son as she sits in a cushioned wicker chair on the veranda of her home on Minjerribah, off the coast of Brisbane. Her house is surrounded by scrubland, and is a short stroll from the turquoise ocean. The bush is alive with cicadas. A warm breeze carries the scent of eucalyptus along the shaded wooden deck.  Patsy built this place a year ago, shortly after returning to the island she grew up on.  “You’ve got to die on country, you know?” she says.

She remembers an idyllic childhood with her 12 younger siblings, bathing in creek water and eating wild fruits and freshly-caught eugaries (pippies) by the light of a kerosene lamp.  They grew up at a place called One Mile named for its distance from the nearest township of Dunwich. This was the era of segregation, when Indigenous people lived under strict controls on missions and reserves, but Patsy didn’t know that yet.  She would learn about discrimination later in life. She would learn that her father had been taken from his family as a small child and raised in an orphanage, unable to speak about the experience before his death at the age of 46.  But perhaps Patsy’s harshest lesson would come when she was 20.  In 1971, living on the mainland and juggling jobs nannying for a large English family and waiting tables at Brisbane’s Treasury Hotel, she became pregnant.  Her partner didn’t want the baby. She had no savings and her parents still had eight of their own children at home.  Unable to see another option, Patsy checked in to the Boothville Mothers’ hospital, a maternity home primarily for single women run by the Salvation Army. She decided to put her baby up for adoption, believing the child would be “better off” with two parents.  But she had no idea what awaited her at Boothville.  Pregnant, she was put to work in the laundry, cleaning the soiled sheets of the married women. Medical records show Patsy was twice hospitalised with high blood pressure “because of the hard work,” she says.

On Friday nights the unwed mothers-to-be attended “Salvationist classes”.  “They said it’s etched in my mind ‘Get down on your knees, you sinners, and ask God for forgiveness’,” Patsy recalls.

Other women have shared similar stories of being shamed, put to work and traumatised at Boothville while single and pregnant.  Around 48 hours in to her labour, as Patsy groaned and panted, she was told: “Be quiet. Stop making so much noise.”

Later, as she held her baby boy, she remembers being awestruck by the little hands.  “That was a picture in my brain all my life. I remember the shape of his hands and his fingers.”

The days after the birth passed in a blur. She remembers someone from the child protection department asking her to sign an adoption agreement. After about a week, Patsy went home, leaving her son behind.  “Emotionally and psychologically, there was really no preparation, no discussion about adoption,” she says.

“The question was, ‘What are you going to do with your baby? Are you putting your baby up for adoption?’ And that was it.”

She tried to resume her nannying duties, but felt heartbroken.  “I was just miserable, you know? I was crying all the time,” she says.

Encouraged by her employer – who assured her she could keep her job and her baby Patsy called the hospital two weeks after giving birth, telling the answering nurse she had made a mistake and was coming to collect her son.  “She said, ‘Well, it’s too late. He’s already gone.’ Those were her exact words,” she says.

Unbeknownst to Patsy, it was not too late. Under the 1964 Queensland Adoption Act, parties could revoke their consent within 30 days of signing an adoption agreement, or before an adoption order was made (whichever came first).  Government documents show Patsy’s son was born in April, but not officially adopted until October.  Patsy now believes this information was deliberately withheld from her.  Children were routinely taken from unwed mothers Indigenous and non-Indigenous from the 1950s to the 1970s in a practice known as forced adoption.  In 2012, a federal inquiry into the practice found information was often withheld from single mothers, including their right to revoke consent for adoptions. Its report mentioned Boothville as an institution where forced adoptions took place.  A decade later, the Salvation Army apologised for its role in Australia’s forced adoptions policy and the continuing effect it has had.  After the birth of her son, a broken-hearted Patsy moved north, living a “reckless” life before settling down to have two more children: another son, and a daughter.  But her first-born was never far from her mind.  “Not a day went by where I didn’t think about him,” she says. “Just looking for him in a crowd, imagining how he might look.”

Patsy believes her son would have been about 15 when she opened up about the ordeal to a social worker friend, who told her the crushing news that she had been entitled to change her mind about the adoption.  “It just felt, you know, can my heart take any more?” she says.

Legally she had to wait until her son was 21 to receive information about his whereabouts.  Even then, it took a year to build up the courage to write a letter to his adoptive parents.  “I was terrified that he might be dead. And then, if he weren’t dead, that he might reject me,” she says.

In 2012, a federal inquiry into the practice found information was often withheld from single mothers, including their right to revoke consent for adoptions. Its report mentioned Boothville as an institution where forced adoptions took place.  A decade later, the Salvation Army apologised for its role in Australia’s forced adoptions policy and the continuing effect it has had.  After the birth of her son, a broken-hearted Patsy moved north, living a “reckless” life before settling down to have two more children: another son, and a daughter.  But her first-born was never far from her mind.  “Not a day went by where I didn’t think about him,” she says. “Just looking for him in a crowd, imagining how he might look.”

Patsy believes her son would have been about 15 when she opened up about the ordeal to a social worker friend, who told her the crushing news that she had been entitled to change her mind about the adoption.  “It just felt, you know, can my heart take any more?” she says.

Legally she had to wait until her son was 21 to receive information about his whereabouts.  Even then, it took a year to build up the courage to write a letter to his adoptive parents.  “I was terrified that he might be dead. And then, if he weren’t dead, that he might reject me,” she says.

Two days later, Patsy got a response: her son, Shannon, was happy to meet.  When she greeted him with a quick hug, she felt his body tense.  “Don’t worry I’ll get used to it,” he told her.

The pair would go on to enjoy barbecues in the park, long phone calls and regular visits as Patsy’s eldest son was welcomed into the family fold.  For Shannon, meeting his extended family was “fantastic” if a little daunting.  “It’s a huge family,” he says.

“It was hard to remember all the names. I’ve had to put them all down on a spreadsheet to keep track.”

But in those first tentative moments at a Brisbane cafe, as Patsy Brown grasped for a way to fill a 22-year chasm, one familiar detail brought her comfort.  “I remember touching his hands and holding them and looking at the palms, and then turning them over and looking at his fingers,” she says.

They had grown since she last held them, but their shape was just the same.

27

Articles / 'I think we brought the wrong one home': one mother's search to find her.....

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on February 24, 2025, 08:30:36 PM »

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/feb/22/i-think-we-brought-the-wrong-one-home-one-mothers-search-to-find-her-lost-son?fbclid=IwY2xjawIpq5NleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHQ3EYA_TTg84FDwcDFkOV77jByeWCYmOaOWqf0aHjNNmncfoZN5iyffbWA_aem_YpbrvcwpKuiq7shxrrgbZA

'I think we brought the wrong one home': one mother's search to find her lost son

Joan always suspected she had been handed someone else's baby by the hospital when she gave birth more than 70 years ago. Then an Ancestry DNA test seemed to prove her right. Now in her 90s, she is in a race against time. Can she find her missing child?

By Jenny Kleeman
Sat 22 Feb 2025 12.00 GMT

When Sue bought her mother and younger brother Ancestry kits for Christmas in 2018, she knew that they were never going to be fun gifts. A lingering doubt had always cast a shadow over their family, a question that had gnawed at them for decades. Sue hoped that, if she, Joan and Doug took DNA tests together, they might finally have the answer they craved.  Their results came in a few weeks later. Ancestry listed Sue and Doug as full siblings, with Joan as their mother. Their father, Tom, had died in 2016. Sue felt certain that William her parents' first child, the older brother she and Doug had grown up with, a man they hadn't seen for years had already taken a DNA test with Ancestry. But he didn't appear anywhere on their genetic family tree.  We could see we were all as we should be, and he was nowhere," Sue explains in the living room of Joan's home in Weymouth. "Then I rang Ancestry, and said he hadn't pulled through as a match. They just said: 'Very sorry for your results, but DNA doesn't lie.'"

The news that William was not biologically related to any of them didn't come as a shock to Sue, Joan or Doug. "It felt like confirmation of what we'd always known," Sue tells me.

William had always seemed so different from the rest of the family. And something strange had happened at the hospital after he was born, something that had always played on Joan's mind, even though for years she kept her worries to herself.  The DNA results turned out to be only the beginning of a quest for answers that would come to consume their family. Joan had given birth to a son in the West Midlands in April 1951. If William wasn't that baby, then who was?

The question has become an obsession that has taken over Sue's life, and cost Joan thousands of pounds.  Cases where babies have been accidentally switched at birth are supposed to be unheard of in the UK. In response to a 2017 Freedom of Information request, the NHS replied that there were no records of babies being accidentally brought home from hospital by the wrong set of parents in recent years. But I have discovered that, at a time before babies were routinely tagged with wristbands and were kept apart from their mothers in creches overnight, mistakes happened with unimaginable consequences.  Last November, I reported on the story of two women who discovered they had been accidentally switched at birth in a West Midlands hospital in 1967 all due to an Ancestry DNA test, received as a Christmas gift and casually taken on a rainy day in 2022.  It was devastating news for both families, and the two women had to question everything they thought they knew about their heritage and identity. The NHS has admitted liability in this case, and agreed to pay compensation – although, three years on, the final sum is still yet to be agreed. The NHS trust told the families it was the first documented case of its kind in the history of the health service.  Since November, my inbox has been filled with stories of other accidental baby swaps, recently discovered through people taking at-home DNA tests out of idle curiosity. A Norwegian lawyer got in touch with news of her client, Mona, who had taken a MyHeritage DNA test in 2021, only to discover that she had been switched at birth in 1965; she was fighting for compensation from the Norwegian government after it was revealed that her birth mother had known about the mistake for decades but had been discouraged from looking for Mona. Another case, in Barcelona in 1972, had also recently come to light because of someone taking a MyHeritage test. The Spanish government has agreed to pay compensation in what will be the third case of its kind in the country.  I didn't have the chance to cuddle him. I never held him. It's a terrible feeling."

Several people have sent me stories about near misses in the UK. A man described how he had been handed to the wrong woman a few hours after his birth in 1953; he was already being breastfed by the time his mother realised the mistake. A woman who had worked for Hampshire social services in the 1990s pointed me towards a case where two babies were taken home from a Southampton hospital by the wrong sets of parents in November 1992 and spent two weeks with the wrong families. One of the mothers had had suspicions, but the other had been convinced she had the right baby until DNA testing confirmed the mixup.  All of which is to say that accidental baby swaps are more common than any of us previously imagined. But Sue, Doug and Joan's case is different from all of these stories. Joan had always secretly suspected she had been given the wrong baby more than 70 years ago, and while the Ancestry test appeared to confirm this, the DNA results have not yet been able to tell her who the right baby was. With Joan now in her mid-90s, Sue feels she is in a race against time to find the biological son her mother never even got to hold. It only takes a few moments in Joan, Doug and Sue's company to sense that they share DNA: they echo each other, in their faces and mannerisms. Joan is ensconced in a reclining chair in her living room, surrounded by pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and stacks of novels. She can't move around the way she used to, but her mind is as sharp as ever. The family moved from Warwickshire to Dorset 50 years ago when Joan's husband, Tom, decided to set up a greengrocer's shop in a seaside town where they used to take holidays. Tom died almost nine years ago; Joan's wedding ring remains on her finger. Doug moved in with his mother four years ago, and he and Sue are her carers. Sue lives a few minutes' drive away.  Joan describes herself as being "a young, young 21" when she went to the West Midlands hospital to give birth to her first child. Married the previous year, she and Tom were living with her parents on the Warwickshire farm where her father raised pigs and cows. Joan's waters broke late on a Sunday night. Tom was nervous when he rang the hospital. "I said: 'Don't panic, we'll be all right,'" she tells me. "He ran all the way down the drive in front of the ambulance to open the field gate. He waved to me. I thought, you should be coming with me."

In the 1950s, men stayed away when women gave birth. "I imagined him shutting the gate after the ambulance. And we went on our way."

The baby arrived at about two in the morning. "They said: 'It's a boy.' And I thought, Tom will be pleased." Tom had grown up with five sisters, and had been desperate for a son. "I said: 'Oh, that's my baby, then. That's lovely.' And I was holding my hands out ready to cuddle him, and they took him away."

She extends her arms, as if still reaching for the newborn who was taken from her. "I didn't have the chance to cuddle him. I never held him. It's a terrible feeling. And even after all these years, you feel it's not right."

Her eyes brim with tears. "You just followed instructions, and that's how it was."

Her son was washed and taken to the creche for the rest of the night, which was routine practice in those days. Joan went to sleep.  A few hours later, the ward sister came into the room Joan shared with three other mothers, carrying four babies in her arms. Joan remembers it vividly – because of what happened next. The sister appeared to lose her grasp on one of the newborns as she approached Joan's bed. "I thought, gracious, she's going to drop one," Joan remembers. "This baby slipped out of her hands and dropped on my legs, and it cried out. If she hadn't have come quickly to me, she would have dropped him on the floor. I grabbed the baby and pulled him to me, because he was crying."

The sister told Joan to feed the baby, and then continued to distribute the other three. "I just kept looking at him and thinking, I wonder if you're my baby?" Joan says.

But, exhausted after the birth and unwilling to challenge a nurse, Joan kept quiet once again. And then Tom came to the hospital, full of excitement that he had a baby boy. She felt she couldn't say anything.  The nagging doubts continued when Joan returned home from hospital. She did what she knew she was supposed to do bathing the baby in a bowl of warm water on the kitchen table, dressing him in the clothes she had knitted for him but things never felt right. "I didn't have that motherly feeling."

Many new mothers feel that way, of course. "It was my first baby, and I was getting used to it, so I just ignored that and got on with it." But the unease lingered. "It was almost like a feeling of: one day they'll bring me the right baby."

Determined never to give birth in hospital again, Joan had Sue and Doug at home. As her three children grew up, the youngest two were always close, but William liked to keep to himself. "I thought, if I've got a family, it has to be a family. But he seemed different from the other two," Joan says.

She pauses. "He was totally, totally different."

Joan is choosing her words carefully. William has been estranged from the family he grew up in for nearly 20 years; their relationship had been very fraught, and Joan is anxious about speaking about him. He did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article. William is not his real name.  "The older we've got, the more you can see which bits are like which parent. But he just didn't look like either of them."

As the years passed, Tom expressed bewilderment about how their first child could be so different from the rest of the family; it was as if they were growing different seeds in the same soil. Joan told him about how William had fallen into her lap at the hospital where he was born. "Tom said: 'I think we brought the wrong one home.' He made up his mind it was the wrong one. Something wasn't right."

Sue says she never had any idea that either of her parents questioned whether William was their biological son. "We had brilliant parents. All of our family a huge family, on both sides everybody was lovely," she says. "We were always brought up to be very close to each other, but where it came naturally to Doug and I, it didn't come naturally to the older one."

"Cousins and friends would comment, saying: 'Oh, he's not like you,'" Doug adds. "There's always been something distant."

Despite their differences, Sue tried to maintain a relationship with William, visiting him when he was at university, sometimes staying over. "But it was hard work."

As she became an adult, she started to ask questions. "We didn't look alike. Doug and I do: we've got the same sort of features, and the older we've got, the more you can see which bits are like which parent. But he just didn't look like either of them."

When Sue was 19 or 20, Joan finally told her about what had happened at the hospital. It made sense to her. So did the DNA results. When she broke the news to old friends and the wider family, it didn't come as a surprise, she says. "Nobody's shocked."

Ancestry had been selling kits in the UK since 2015, but Sue had chosen to wait until she had retired and had the time and headspace to process whatever a test might reveal. William had been into genealogy for years, Sue tells me: he had had an Ancestry profile since before the company sold test kits. She knew he would have taken a DNA test once they came on the market.  And when their results came in, in early 2019, William sent Joan a text, out of the blue, asking whether they had done Ancestry tests; a cousin had been in touch trying to work out why Sue had appeared as a genetic match to him, but William had not. Joan confirmed that they'd tested. "Sue's not a match," William replied. "You're not my mother."

It was the last contact any of them have had with William.  Joan was devastated. William was still the son she'd raised, after all. "When he said: 'You're not my mother,' it went through me," she tells me, her fists clenched across her chest. "I thought, so he's not mine. It pulls you apart. It's a dreadful thing: a child is not yours."

How soon did she start thinking about who her biological son could be?

"Straight away."

"I got heavily into it then," Sue tells me. "You get on to Ancestry and start searching for somebody I think, I'll just do an hour tonight. Five hours later, I'm thinking, you've got to get to sleep. This has been going on ever since I took the test."

It has dominated her thoughts for the past six years.  DNA results can take over people's lives. Sue is not the first to get lost trying to find someone after a revelation reframes a family. There are scores of Facebook groups run by genealogists sometimes called "Search Angels" or "DNA Detectives" who offer to decode DNA results or track down missing people, often for nothing, but sometimes for a fee. An entire industry has sprung up of companies that offer similar services.  At first, Sue did her own detective work. There were no unexpected connections in her Ancestry results that could reveal who this missing brother might be. But Sue's Ancestry subscription allowed her to access birth records, so she immediately downloaded the names of all the people whose births were registered in the relevant area in spring 1951. She deleted the girls, and put the 130 remaining possible candidates on a spreadsheet, colour-coding the ones that looked most promising. "A work of art," she says proudly.

Next, Sue scoured the internet for any possible clue about exactly when the men on her spreadsheet were born, and whether it could be at the hospital where they believe the swap took place. "I found one guy on Facebook. I was thinking, he doesn't look like us. I went through looking where everybody had said 'Happy Birthday' to get the date. And he flippin' died the day after I found him," she says, ruefully.

She began to search death records, too, marking down those on her spreadsheet who were no longer alive in a different colour.  She wrote to the hospital, asking for any information about who was born at the same time as Joan gave birth, but the hospital told her they couldn't help. (In a statement, the managing director of the hospital NHS Trust involved said: "While we sympathise with [Joan], NHS organisations are legally required to destroy birth registers after 25 years. The Trust has complied with this requirement and there are no records at the hospital NHS Trust to be able to assist with this matter.")

Then, Sue contacted the General Register Office (GRO), which said it did have records of babies born at the hospital around the time Joan gave birth, but it would not release them without a court order. "There's 33 different kinds of court orders," Sue sighs. "You've got to pay a solicitor to deal with it all. I wouldn't know where to start."

She turns to a neat stack of pale papers, at least an inch thick. These are the birth certificates she has ordered so far, at huge expense. She got them from Ancestry at first, at £25 each, until she realised she could order them for £12.50 if she went direct to the GRO. "I've probably got about 60 or 65 more to get," she tells me. She's getting them in batches of 10, because that's all Joan's budget allows. "Doug and I aren't in a position to be paying for it, and Mum's got limited funds she's living off a pension."

This is all on top of Sue's Ancestry subscription, which costs her £13.99 a month. She's been subscribing for the past six years.  And this is only the beginning of their spending. Joan has always known the last name of the woman who was in the bed next to her at the hospital in 1951 it was the same as her own maiden name. They hired a people-tracing firm, Relative Connections, to track down the son that woman gave birth to. The company managed to find him, and passed on Joan's offer to pay for him to take a DNA test that would rule him in or out of their family, but he refused. In the end, his daughter and niece both agreed to take Ancestry tests, at Joan's expense. "It turned out they were first cousins, and neither of them pulled through as a match to us. So we knew it wasn't him," Sue explains. Crossing his name off the spreadsheet had cost Joan another £1,147. This has left two possible candidates: the men who, as babies, were given to the women in the two beds opposite Joan.  Their hopes are now pinned on another man whose date and place of birth match up. Relative Connections made contact with him a few months ago, Sue says. The company has spoken to him on the phone, and passed on a letter from her, Joan and Doug, explaining how much it would mean to them if he took the test. They followed up the letter with emails and voicemails. But he has neither agreed to take the DNA test nor refused.  "I am 99.9% sure he was one of the babies the nurse was carrying. Whether he's the one that should have been with Mum, we won't know unless he does a DNA test," Sue says,

frustration rising in her voice. They've even offered to pay for him to have a more expensive test with a private lab, in case he's wary of being on Ancestry's database: he'd give his DNA, Joan would give hers, they'd get the results within 24 hours, and it would remain between the two of them. But there has been no response from him since the initial phone call.  Sue gets out her phone again, this time to show me the picture she's taken from this man's Facebook and placed next to pictures of her family for easy comparison.  "He looks like Doug. Dad's shape face. The nose looks like Mum's."

"He's got a big nose like me!" Joan chips in.

I look over to Doug, and he does look quite a bit like this stranger from Facebook. But then Sue shows me another picture of the same man, this time with the woman he thinks is his mother, and I think they look alike.  "That is supposed to be his older brother," Sue continues, pulling up another photo. "Now, I think he looks like ..." and she brings up a picture of William. "He has got the ears the same as that guy, who's supposed to be the older brother to that one." You could lose your mind, scrutinising faces like this.

Sue found Relative Connections on Google. "When I spoke to them on the phone, they were very good, and said they do it for television programmes as well. I thought, we've got to find him. But obviously, we have to give them another £1,000 to find this one who hasn't agreed to test yet. I'm very conscious that it's Mum's money."

Why not just contact him directly, instead of using an intermediary? "I know his address. I could have done it myself," Sue concedes. "I didn't want him to think that some crazy stalkers had come after him. I wanted him to feel that it wasn't just some crackpot – this genuinely happened."

"This isn't a TV show where everyone's happy to have contact and everyone sits in a lovely tea shop having scones together," says Sue Harrison, Sue's contact at Relative Connections. "That's not reality. There are variable outcomes and they're not always going to be what you want."

Harrison is telling me about the importance of expectation management in her line of work. Her background is in customer service she had no experience of people-tracing before she started at Relative Connections a decade ago. Her goal, she says, is to bring her clients closure.  There are a huge range of reasons why people hire her: sometimes they are looking for a beneficiary named in a will, or old school friends, or people they met on holiday. "One of our most popular searches is for old sweethearts."

Family estrangements keep them busy, with parents looking for grownup kids, and vice versa.  Now that one in 20 British people has taken a DNA test, and more than 26 million Americans, an important new dimension has been added to their business. Harrison has come to understand the amount of shared DNA that makes a sibling, a parent or a cousin. They have a dedicated team member who specialises in decoding results from Ancestry, 23andMe and MyHeritage.  I've called Harrison because I want to understand the value professional services such as hers could bring to families like Joan's. What do they do that their customers can't on their own?

"Most people come to us after years of trying to find a person themselves," Harrison says. "You would think that with social media it would be easier now than it was years ago, but it's actually harder." These days, we have the option of choosing not to be on the public electoral register, and fewer of us have landlines; there's no reliable phone book to look people up in any more. Relative Connections has access to paid databases that aren't in the public domain, Harrison says, with verified addresses. But the real value they bring, she continues, comes from taking on the role of intermediary: "Having someone who's a step back, who's not related, who's not emotionally involved with either side."

It's not uncommon for people to believe they have been switched at birth, Harrison tells me; for some, that is less far-fetched than the idea that they share DNA with the family that raised them. But Joan's story stands out as the first case the company has handled where there's every reason to believe a baby swap has actually taken place.  "The human inside of me is incredibly frustrated," she says. "I don't want Joan to leave this Earth not knowing what happened."

The man Sue has identified as very likely to be one of the babies given to a mother opposite Joan in April 1951 seemed friendly and amenable on the one occasion when Harrison spoke to him on the phone, she tells me. He verified that he was born on the right date, and at the same hospital. "I'm at the point where I have to assume at this stage he's choosing not to get back in touch," she says.

They will send a final letter, and if that goes ignored, Harrison says she will ask his daughter to take a DNA test. "Had he contacted us and said: 'I don't want to know at my time of life,' then I probably wouldn't have agreed to contacting the daughter. But he hasn't, and I don't know why. I have to balance that between what Joan and Sue need. Time is running out."

Sue is painfully aware that had William's attitude been different, they could have quickly found the answers they sought by looking through their genetic family trees together. "If we find who should have been with us, he's going to find where he should have been."

Beyond the text to Joan saying she wasn't his mother, William has never discussed his DNA results with the family he grew up with. Joan's memories of the hospital, and the differences between the siblings, mean Joan, Doug and Sue are all convinced the switch must have happened. And Joan has invested too much in the search to give up now.  Now in his late 60s, Doug doesn't really care about finding his older brother. "For me, personally, it doesn't matter one way or the other. I don't need anyone else in my life now to start another relationship with. That's not to say that the person wouldn't be welcomed it's just, that time's gone, for me. But from mum's point of view, I'd definitely like it sorted," he tells me.

Sue has submitted her DNA to five other sites to maximise her chances. She checks Ancestry every day for new matches. "When I go to bed, I've got my phone, I've got my spreadsheet, and I have to get on it. It's just a huge mystery to solve."

She and Joan believe that if they could find this person, then their family will finally make sense. But what if they do, and he doesn't want to be part of it?

"We won't know unless we find him," Sue replies. "I need to find him, and I need to get the answers and then work out the rest of it from there."

As the years go on, Joan is ever more troubled by the idea that she may never find out what happened at the hospital. "Before I go, it would be lovely to know," she tells me. "I know it sounds silly, but sometimes I can't sleep."

She wipes her eyes beneath her glasses. "I hope he's had a good life that's the main thing, isn't it?"

Given the money and hours spent searching, and the mental anguish of believing that the son she brought up was not her own, and that her firstborn child a baby she never got to hold was raised in another family, is Joan glad she took the DNA test in the first place?

"Oh yes. Yes," she replies, immediately. "Everybody wants the truth, don't they?"

*  Jenny Kleeman's interview with Joan and family will be aired in The Gift: Bonus Episode – Searching, on Radio 4 at 3pm on Tuesday 25 February and on BBC Sounds from today.

28

General Discussion / Re: Devotions

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on February 22, 2025, 05:42:54 PM »

https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2024/07/17/one-simple-change-to-celebrate-our-spiritual-uniqueness?utm_campaign=Daily%20Devotions&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--otZ_A714N3BaxeOBqrU0s_7uFPUt_OjGi6_SThf0JBx5b1v04w0SmXmjsfeKUaDB582NgdhawW_39lkaPy45sxzvEjw&_hsmi=313508618&utm_content=313508618&utm_source=hs_email#disqus_thread

One Simple Change To Celebrate Our Spiritual Uniqueness
July 17, 2024
by Asheritah Ciuciu

"Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness." Psalm 89:15-16 (NIV)

Do you suffer from spiritual comparison syndrome? It might sound like this:

“I wish I could pray like Susie … She seems to have a direct line to heaven.”
“If only I could memorize the Bible like Jen … She recites entire chapters at a time.”
“I’ll never journal artistically in my Bible like Fatima … She creates the most beautiful art.”
“At least I'm keeping up with my Scripture reading plan … Rhonda is two weeks behind.”

When we compare our spiritual habits to others’, we can feel inferior and discouraged or prideful and accomplished, but the result is the same: Our hearts become distant from God’s presence.  But when we look closely, we learn there is no one-size-fits-all devotional formula prescribed in the Bible. God created each of us with unique personalities, learning styles, strengths and experiences, and as our loving Creator, He welcomes us to bring our whole selves to Him in worship.  We see this principle in Psalm 89:15-16, which reads: “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; they celebrate your righteousness.”

Throughout Israel’s history, worship leaders wrote psalms and taught the people new songs of praise to celebrate the Lord during temple worship services. But their worship extended beyond the temple courts the people were to “walk in the light of [His] presence all day long” (Psalm 89:15-16).

Whether they were farmers singing as they plowed, weavers praying at the loom, or midwives praising God as new life was born, they were to actively learn and practice new ways of rejoicing in the Lord.  What would our lives look like if we adopted this growth mindset in our relationship with Jesus?

What if, instead of comparing our spiritual habits to others, we asked God’s Spirit to teach us to praise Him the way He made us?

For example, my stick-figure doodles in the margins of my Bible will never impress Pinterest, but that’s OK. I feel closest to God while quietly watching a sunset and digging deep into theology.

Imagine celebrating our sisters and brothers in Christ instead of suffering that dreaded comparison!

We can thank the Bible enthusiast in our small group whose knowledge gives us something to ponder during the week.

We can lean on that prayer warrior when we need someone to support us through a family crisis.

We can appreciate those whose gifts are different than ours, and we can embrace the unique way God created us to worship Him, delighting in Him all day long.

29

Articles / Mother-and-baby home survivors advised of deadline

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on February 20, 2025, 02:48:07 PM »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c204rx7ew2xo?at_link_id=4AD09E16-EE8C-11EF-8EFA-C70AA461624D&at_link_origin=BBC_News_NI&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_medium=social&at_ptr_name=facebook_page&at_link_type=web_link&at_format=link&at_campaign_type=owned&at_campaign=Social_Flow&fbclid=IwY2xjawIkHjpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHa3sPu8rzz6XuRJzeVyx-NT52DvB13xza02SHyYakJMgGK1KMS_GzoSZbw_aem_xPWSPfrR4oBZPyO-fLOUnw

Mother-and-baby home survivors advised of deadline

Eimear Flanagan
BBC News NI
Published
19 February 2025

People who want to share their experiences of Northern Ireland's mother-and-baby homes have been advised there is a cut-off point to testify ahead of a public inquiry.  Former residents who spent time in the homes, or working in Magdalene laundries, are urged to register their interest in taking part before the deadline on 1 May.  To date, more than 140 people have provided personal testimonies to an independent panel of experts who are investigating how the institutions operated.  The panel is particularly keen to hear from anyone with experience of or information about Protestant-run homes in order to provide a fuller picture of the whole system.  They said they have "developed a sensitive and trauma-informed approach" so the testimony process would be "respectful and non-adversarial" towards survivors.  The experts' final report is due to be published later this year, and the panel's findings will help inform the forthcoming public inquiry into the institutions.  It is believed more than 10,500 women were admitted to mother-and-baby institutions in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1990.  Run by religious, state and charitable organisations, they housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage.  A further 3,500 women and girls were sent to laundries or industrial homes where many of them had to work without pay.

Truth Recovery Independent Panel

In 2021, Stormont's devolved government agreed to order an independent investigation into the institutions, external and their treatment of women and children.  The Truth Recovery Independent Panel, which is carrying out preparatory investigations, is also examining the homes' role in adoption and fostering.  In addition, the panel is investigating the practice of cross-border adoption in which babies were separated from single mothers and sent outside the state.  The institutions included in the Truth Recovery Independent Panel's investigation are:

    Deanery Flats

    Hopedene Hostel

    Kennedy House/Church of Ireland Rescue League, Belfast

    Malone Place/Belfast Midnight Mission Maternity Home Belfast

    Marianvale, Newry, Mother and Baby Institution

    Marianville, Belfast

    Mater Dei Hostel, Belfast

    Mount Oriel

    Thorndale House, Salvation Army, Belfast

    Workhouses across Northern Ireland

    Magdalene Laundries

    St Mary's, Magdalene laundry, Belfast

    St Mary's, Magdalene laundry, Londonderry

    St Mary's Magdalene laundry, Newry

Information on Protestant-run homes sought

The co-chairs of the panel Prof Leanne McCormick and Prof Sean O'Connell -urged survivors and their families to register in time to ensure their voices are heard.  "To gain the fullest picture possible, we continue to appeal to members of the Protestant community or anyone with information relating to Protestant-run homes in our remit to consider coming forward," they said.

"We are also appealing to the diaspora across the UK, and internationally in America, Canada, and Australia to make their voice heard."

They added they are seeking testimony from anyone who with information about organisations involved in the "forced separation of a birth mother from an infant".

The panel can be contacted by emailing testimony@independentpanel.org.uk or by phoning 028 9052 0263.

Interim compensation payments

Separate to the Truth Recovery exercise, Stormont's Executive Office has proposed a redress scheme for people who spent time in mother-and-baby homes.  Last summer it consulted the public on a proposal to offer a standardised interim payment of £10,000 to anyone who spent at least 24 hours in a home.  The consultation added this could be followed by further individually-assessed payments, based on survivors' personal circumstances, when the inquiry concludes.  A total of 269 responses to that public consultation were received but the results have not yet been published.

30

General Discussion / Re: Devotions

« Last post by Forgotten Mother on February 14, 2025, 06:46:56 PM »

https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2024/07/10/when-he-appears-in-the-flames?utm_campaign=Daily%20Devotions&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_-JWpNr2YBUjsHUlUOCVA3p9Ppu-viFdyHA-eEcb2uFVpAswMXwup-9_z0yC-On255NDmn7yC4wqdRoMdHWRbI8zDjEQ&_hsmi=311637015&utm_content=311637015&utm_source=hs_email#disqus_thread

When He Appears in the Flames
July 10, 2024
by Sarah Freymuth, COMPEL Training Member

“And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.” Exodus 3:2 (ESV)

The earth rolls by as I drive home, heart heavy with fear and uncertainty. I’ve lived in a realm of listlessness for months, fighting through fatigue and anxiety that doesn’t fully go away. Worn weary, I wonder where I even am on God’s radar. Does He see my pain?

Worries about health keep cycling in my mind. I am looking for any sign that God sees me. Didn’t God give Moses a burning bush?

Then my “burning bush” appears.  I’m driving down a familiar road when my eyes flash up to a side street: Burning Bush Lane. In the rocky clefts and broken landscape of my heart, this sign encourages me that I am seen.  God is here, even in the flames of my pain. I recall what God told Moses in Exodus 3:5: “The place on which you are standing is holy ground” (ESV).

Perhaps my hurts and worries are held on holy ground as well.  In Exodus 3, God appeared in the wilderness where Moses thought all was lost. God watched for Moses to come near, then spoke from the flames, affirming both His character and Moses’ identity: “I am the God of your father ...” (Exodus 3:6, ESV, emphases added). He used the flickering flames of singeing fire to speak and soothe.

“And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2).

God reaches us in surprising ways even as we stumble through our turmoil and pain. He is patient and kind; He is always near, waiting for us to turn toward Him, and He speaks when we open up our hearts in complete vulnerability.  We never know where the Lord will appear to us, but we can settle into a posture of receiving His voice, even when it comes in unexpected ways. Especially when it comes in unexpected ways, like the fires of trial and suffering.  Our pain has purpose. We can believe God when He says He works all things together for good. Heartaches, health struggles, strained relationships, feelings of despair and worry.  All things work together for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28).  We may never fully know the reasons for our suffering, but we can be certain that whether it feels like it or not, we are on holy ground because the Holy One is with us, making a way in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:19).