baby
My baby died at birth and I wasn’t even allowed to hold him. Then, 42 years later, he emailed me out of the blue… and I learned the horrific truth
My baby died at birth and I wasn’t even allowed to hold him. Then, 42 years later, he emailed me out of the blue… and I learned the horrific truth
By DIANE SHEEHAN
Published: 01:47, 5 September 2025 | Updated: 08:12, 5 September 2025
As I opened the email, I was transported back more than 40 years. Back to a stark hospital room and a cold stainless-steel trolley where I lay, naked, bleeding, terrified and alone.
Violent tremors shook my body as the trauma of that terrible day in September 1976 came flooding back. Shameful memories I’d been so careful to keep locked away were suddenly screaming for attention. I read the words on my phone again … and again. This couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t.
A 42-year-old man called Simon had written to me out of the blue, to say he believed I could be his mother. He’d been adopted at birth and the dates and location certainly tallied; I had indeed had a baby that day, in secret, as a woefully naïve, unmarried 21-year-old.
But Simon couldn’t be my son, because my baby had died. The midwives had whisked it away, without even telling me if I’d had a boy or a girl, before returning to tell me, dispassionately, that the baby was dead.
There were no comforting words, no ‘sorry for your loss’. To everyone at the hospital, I was nothing short of a disgrace and my baby’s death just punishment for my terrible sin.
And so, for four decades, I’d not spoken a word about it: not to my family or friends – not even to my husband and two children. I swallowed my grief and shame, but it never left me.
But could this stranger be telling the truth? Had my baby survived?
With trembling fingers, I opened the photos Simon had included with his message.

Diane Sheehan gave birth in September 1976 but was told her baby had died. She wasn’t able to hold him
There I saw one of his daughter: a small, smiling girl, with my exact dark blonde curls and hazel eyes. It honestly felt like I was looking at a picture of myself as a child.
In that moment, my whole world turned upside down. Forty-two years after leaving hospital with nothing but a broken heart and buried trauma, I was finally on my way to learning the shocking truth.
Like thousands of unmarried mothers across the world, I’d been a victim of a heinous scandal. Such was the shame of having a baby out of wedlock back then, that up until the late 1970s thousands of children were adopted against their mother’s wishes.
In my case, the authorities went one step further by lying to me that my baby had died, so I didn’t even get a chance to object.
Of course, no statistics exist citing how many poor young girls were victims of this particularly cruel crime. If, like me, they’d kept their pregnancy secret, possibly hundreds went to their graves never knowing their child had lived.
Although I count myself as one of the lucky ones as I eventually discovered the truth, at the age of 63, my fury was intense.
It was more than anger; it was a sense of total disempowerment. These strangers had taken control of my life, because they thought that they knew better, and treated me like rubbish to be swept away and forgotten.
I was born in 1955 to a strict Catholic family, the eldest of five children, and raised in Wellington, New Zealand.

Diane in her 20s. She had her baby in secret as an unmarried 21-year-old
We went to a religious school and church three times a week. Our ‘sex education’ – if you can call it that – consisted of quite frankly ridiculous ‘advice’ such as never to sit on a bus seat after a boy, as you could get pregnant.
When I left home at 19 to work in a pub in Sydney, Australia, mum had slipped me a booklet about anatomy under the bathroom door, but even then I had only the sketchiest ideas about biology and how babies were made.
From Sydney, I got an au pair job in Canada, where I lived an ideal life, riding horses on the family’s land. And it was here, aged 20, that I fell in love with Jason, a handsome man ten years my senior, who lived on a nearby farm.
Of course, when we began having sex, we didn’t use contraception. Utterly naïve, and hopelessly in love, it just didn’t occur to me.
When Jason got a job in California I went to visit him for a weekend but missed my flight home. When I returned, my employer was furious and sacked me on the spot. No job meant no visa, so I had to return to New Zealand.
I was devastated. By then Jason was travelling and, while I considered writing to his old farm in the hope they might be able to pass on a message, since they didn’t know about our relationship, I eventually decided not to.
A month later I got another job in Sydney, at a horse farm run by a Catholic doctor, Mark, and his wife, Alice. When I started feeling nauseous, I initially put it down to heartbreak. Yet I’d seen enough on the farm to understand what my swelling stomach signalled.
Denial and guilt are a powerful combination, however, so I hid in baggy dungarees and worked from sunrise to sunset, deliberately leaving myself too exhausted to think about the future.

Diane ploughed all her energy into work, going on to study veterinary science at university and qualifying as a vet
My feelings of shame were so intense I didn’t consider telling anyone – not my family, or even Jason. But there was only so long I could maintain my state of denial.
One night in September 1976, when I was 21, my contractions started. By morning, the pain was so intense, I staggered to the main house begging for help, saying I had dreadful stomach-ache.
Alice drove me to the local doctor. I heard him say, ‘oh my God’ as he removed my overalls, and I saw the shock – and anger – on Alice’s face when the truth hit her.
She refused to even go with me to the hospital.
The same attitude greeted me on the labour ward, where one glance at my ringless left hand told the medical staff everything they needed to know.
I’ve managed to block out most of the details of the birth: the agony, the terror and the strange silence that descended as my baby was bundled up and spirited away in a stranger’s arms.
I never heard him cry. I never even saw his face. I was left naked, bleeding, freezing and sobbing on the hospital trolley.
What happened next is still a horrible blur; I can’t remember the specific words used, but I know a woman returned to tell me my baby hadn’t survived.

Diane never heard her baby cry and didn’t even see his face
At that moment, I shut down, without the strength to ask any questions, telling myself I deserved this.
The next thing I remember, some paperwork was thrust into my hand, and a cold voice told me I couldn’t leave until I’d signed the discharge papers. Like a robot I did what I was told.
I was in turmoil, and without anyone to comfort me. Nobody knew about my pregnancy except Alice and Mark, and their house was the only place I had to go.
I can’t recall how I got there, I just remember walking into the house and no one uttered a word. They didn’t ask about the baby, or what had happened – nothing.
It was such a dark time. But how could I grieve a child I’d tried so hard to pretend I’d never carried?
I did the only thing I could think of; I put it all – Jason, the pregnancy, the baby – in a mental box and slammed it shut.
Later that year, when a visiting vet offered me a job elsewhere in Sydney, I left Alice and Mark’s house without saying goodbye.
A new Diane had replaced the naïve, trusting girl who’d first left home at 19 – a young woman hardened to the world and determined never to be made to feel so powerless again.
I ploughed all my energy into work, going on to study veterinary science at university and qualifying as a vet.
In 1983, I met Ian, another student. He was my first sexual partner since Jason but, having now abandoned my faith, our relationship felt fun and exciting – free from the guilt I’d previously felt.
We went on to marry in 1987, yet I never came close to sharing my terrible secret with him; while he might have been supportive, I didn’t want to risk ruining my fresh start by opening Pandora’s box.
In 1991, our daughter Sarah was born. The pregnancy was a world away from my first one; now, everyone was so happy for me, and I felt loved and respected.
As for the birth itself, it was night and day compared with my previous labour.
And yet, after Sarah was taken to be weighed and measured, I didn’t automatically hold out my arms to get her back. I was frozen. The nurse had to gently ask, ‘Do you want to hold your baby?’
When I did, the wave of love I felt was incredible. Cradling my beautiful daughter in my arms, it hit me: this one I get to keep.
I promised her I wouldn’t let a day go by without me telling her how much I loved her.
I adored motherhood, and at times watching Sarah I’d find myself thinking ‘What if …?’
Yet I’d quickly push those thoughts away.
When our son Daniel was born two years later, I felt the same fierce love of a woman who knows what it’s like to not bring a baby home. Somehow, 25 years passed. The children grew into happy, healthy adults and, although my marriage didn’t last, I was living a good life, filled with love.
Then one evening in December 2018, I’d been out for dinner with Daniel and on my return noticed an email on my phone from an unknown address.
It was long, and at first only certain phrases jumped out at me. That Simon, the writer, had been adopted at birth, from the same hospital I’d attended, and had recently taken a DNA test, which had led him, via a long, convoluted path, to me.
He’d found a picture of me online and had immediately recognised a similarity to his own daughter, then three.
While some people might have thought it was a mistake, or a scam, when I saw the picture of Simon himself, I was left in no doubt. He was the image of Jason. I knew, just knew, that this 42-year-old man was my first-born child, and that the hospital authorities had lied to me.
Those ‘discharge’ papers at the hospital? They must have been adoption papers. The cruelty took my breath away.
I had no idea where to turn to or what to do.
Frantically googling for answers, I found The Benevolent Society, which supports people affected by adoption.
The very next day, I found myself sitting in their office with a counsellor.
For the first time in 42 years, I talked about my past. Everything I’d bottled up for decades, all the pain, fear, guilt and shame, came pouring out – as well as my new-found anger.
The counsellor told me there had been thousands of forced adoptions in Australia in the past and, shockingly, telling unmarried mothers their babies had died wasn’t uncommon.
With her help I was able to sit down and write a reply to Simon a few days later.
‘There’s no easy way to say this,’ I wrote. ‘But when you were born, I was told you’d died.’
I tried to explain the impact that losing him had on my life, and told him about Sarah and Daniel, his half-sister and brother.
Without my counsellor I’d never have made it through; my emotions were in free-fall. I was grappling with exhaustion and guilt at hiding this bombshell from Sarah and Daniel, as well as the awful fear that when they did discover it, they’d judge me.
I knew I’d have to tell them at some point, but I needed to meet Simon first, to get my facts straight.
In follow-up emails, Simon explained he’d been adopted at birth by a lovely couple who adored him. Though he always knew he was adopted, he’d had a wonderful childhood.
After becoming a father himself he decided he wanted to find his birth parents, and he’d registered his DNA on an ancestry website, which led him to Jason’s family in Canada.
Jason had recently died, but a relative remembered him mentioning his old girlfriend Diane in Australia, and he’d managed to trace me. When he did, he realised his ancestry results had linked him to some of my relatives too.
Of course, Simon was devastated to learn about the terrible circumstances of his birth. Like me, the sheer cruelty of it astounded him.
His adoptive parents had been kept in the dark too; they’d been told I had chosen to give Simon up but wanted him to be raised by a Catholic family, and for years they’d even sent me letters and photos showing his progress to an address they’d been given. Who knows where they ended up.
The next month I flew two hours from my home in Brisbane to meet Simon.
I was almost hyperventilating with fear. Would blood be enough to bring us together, or would Simon decide he didn’t want me in his life after all? And what would all this mean for Sarah and Daniel?
Then suddenly I was walking through arrivals and saw him, holding a bunch of white flowers. All my fears flew away, and I fell sobbing into his arms – the first time I’d ever held him. He didn’t feel like a stranger at all.
Our conversation – about his family and mine – was warm and easy.
I couldn’t stop staring at him, unable to believe I could reach across the table and touch him. It felt impossible, yet wonderful.
It was hard to say goodbye the next day, but there was one huge hurdle I needed to clear: I had to tell Sarah and Daniel my secret.
Two days later, I invited them over for a dinner, shaking with nerves as we sat down.
Hearing my shocking story, they were incredible; hurt and horrified for me, yet excited to meet their new half-brother.
My relief was indescribable; I fell asleep with a smile on my face for the first time in decades. It was only after it lifted that I realised the true weight of what I’d been carrying all these years.
A few weeks later, we were all sitting in a busy restaurant in Brisbane, sharing food and laughing. Looking around at my three children was overwhelming, and I felt a sense of peace that had once seemed impossible.
There were still more emotional moments to come, like telling my siblings and seeing their shock and sadness, though they were all supportive. My parents had died years before.
In 2019, a year after Simon’s email, I met his adoptive parents. Though what happened at his birth is so sad, I’m glad he found such a loving family.
I investigated pursuing the matter with the hospital where I’d given birth, but was told the buildings had been demolished and the records destroyed.
I decided not to pour my energy into a fight I probably wouldn’t win, and I refused to let bitterness consume me. Instead, I chose peace, to live for now and spend the time I do have with my incredible family.
It isn’t always easy. The anguish of those lost years, and the love I could have given Simon, is a wound that will never heal.
Still, our relationship is wonderful, comfortable and peaceful. We see each other every month and talk or text three times a week.
I’m so proud of the kind, caring person, and amazing father, he is – and the incredible bond we have built against all odds.
- Names have been changed
- As told to Kate Graham
‘They just took the baby away’: Family speaks out in church-run homes scandal
‘They just took the baby away’: Family speaks out in church-run homes scandal
- Wednesday 16 October 2024 at 10:27pm


A family has come forward following an ITV News investigation into cruelty and abuse at ex church run mother and baby homes, Social Affairs Correspondent Sarah Corker reports
Further allegations of abuse and neglect at a former church-run mother and baby home in Cumbria have emerged, following an ITV News investigation. Earlier this year we revealed that 45 babies who had died at St Monica’s home – in Kendal were buried in an unmarked grave in the town’s cemetery.
St Monica’s was one of hundreds of homes for unmarried mothers across England.
Between 1949 and the mid-1970s, an estimated 200,000 women were sent away to homes run by churches and the state where they were pressured and coerced in to give up their babies for adoption. Other infants died through poor care.
Since our first report aired in July, the family of one of those children has come forward and told ITV News that their mother was lied to about the fate of her baby daughter, Faith, and was never told where she was buried.
Norah Everard was in her 80s, and dying from cancer, when she told her family for the first time about the trauma she’d endured decades earlier as a teenager in 1941.
Pregnant and unmarried, she was sent away to St Monica’s, which was run by the Diocese of Carlisle, to have her baby.
Norah’s son Bob Chubb recounted the details that his late mother shared with him and his wife Carole about the “cruel” home.

“We were all round the table one Christmas, and she said ‘I’ve got something important to tell you both. Bob you weren’t my first born’, and then she told me about being raped as a young school girl, going to St Monica’s in Kendal to have the baby, and the baby was stillborn, called Faith,” Bob told ITV News.
Burial records seen by ITV News suggest that Norah was lied to, they show that Faith wasn’t stillborn and that she had lived for 12 hours and was later buried in an unmarked grave at Parkside Cemetery in Kendal – one of the 45 babies who were buried in secrecy.
If you’d like to share your story please get in touch with Sarah on the following email: Investigations@itv.com
“I don’t think she was told the truth. I think some terrible things went on,” Mr Chubb said. Carole Chubb, Bob’s wife, said: “It really really disgusts me. They just took the baby away and said the baby’s dead and that’s it. Did they even given her any milk? Would she have survived? “Norah told me it was cruel place, they made the women scrub floors when they were heavily pregnant and they were refused pain relief in labour as a punishment.”
Bob and Carole share their family’s story and concerns about how babies were treated
Concerns have been raised by other families about the poor care of sick and premature babies at the home in the decades after the war, while official documents from the archives paint a disturbing picture of neglect, cruelty and suffering inside St Monica’s. Bob revealed that he too was born prematurely at the same home in the late 1940s, and feels ‘lucky’ that he survived.
The acting Bishop of Carlisle Rt Rev Rob Saner-Haigh described what had happened to Norah and her daughter as ‘wrong’ and said he was ‘really sorry’ for the way women and children had been treated.
The acting Bishop of Carlisle Rt Rev Rob Saner-Haigh answers questions from ITV News
Since allegations of abuse first emerged, 20 people with a connection to St Monica’s have contacted the Diocese requesting access to their family records. “The Church of England should do all it can to support people who have lived with the trauma. We need to listen and give them a choice in decision making so they can tell us what they need and as an organisation we show them the love and dignity that they weren’t shown before,” he said.
The family of another baby, Stephen Holt, who died aged 3 months old at the home in 1964, are now campaigning for a permanent memorial to the 45 babies.
It was years later when baby Stephen’s mother Judith Hindley first told her husband, also called Stephen, of the abuse she endured at the ‘draconian’ home in the late 1960s. “Judith was 17 at the time and told me how she was forced to clean floors and kitchens while heavily pregnant. They were being punished,” he said. “Her son Stephen was born with disabilities and needed to go to hospital, but he was cruelly denied proper medical care and died 11 weeks later.” She never recovered from that trauma and in 2006, Judith took her own life close to the cemetery where her baby is buried.
Stephen Hindley explains what happened to his wife Judith at St Monica’s and why he is campaigning for a memorial
Cumbria Police has confirmed it is still investigating allegations of historic abuse at St Monica’s and said it “would welcome any new information which would assist officers…following concerns raised in relation to these premises”. Westmorland and Furness District Council which owns the cemetery where the graves are located said: “We are currently exploring options and reaching out to others who may wish to be involved or consulted on the possibility of marking the unmarked graves at Parkside Road cemetery, Kendal relating to the former St Monica’s Maternity home.”
Department for Education spokesperson said: “We have the deepest sympathy with all of those who are affected, the practice was abhorrent and should never have taken place.
“While we will not be able to quickly make every change we would like, we will look at whether there is any more we could do to support those affected.”
Mother and baby homes: NI-born survivor ‘abandoned again’
Mother and baby homes: NI-born survivor ‘abandoned again’
Published 18 March
By Eimear Flanagan BBC News NI
A woman from Dublin, born into a mother and baby home in Northern Ireland, has said she feels “abandoned again” because she is excluded from a new compensation scheme. Sinead Buckley was born in 1972 to an unmarried woman from the Republic of Ireland. At that time her mother, Eileen, was living in Marianvale in Newry. A midwife in Dublin, Eileen came north because of the fear and stigma associated with being a single mother. Marianvale was one of a network of institutions across the island of Ireland which housed unmarried women and their babies at a time when pregnancy outside marriage was viewed as scandalous. After the birth in Newry’s Daisy Hill Hospital, an adoption agency in the Republic arranged for Eileen’s baby to be adopted by a family in Dublin. Ms Buckley grew up and still lives in Dublin, but never got to meet her birth mother. Eileen died during a Covid lockdown which meant she endured the heartbreak of watching her mother’s funeral over the internet. This week, the Republic of Ireland will open an €800m (£684m) redress scheme, external for survivors of its own mother and baby homes. Ms Buckley is one of thousands of Irish adoptees who will not qualify, despite her decades-long battle with the Irish state to access her birth identity and family medical history. “I grew up with a sense of rejection and abandonment and I feel like I’ve just been completely abandoned again,” she told BBC News NI.
“I used to be proud to be Irish, I’m not anymore. I’m not Irish what I am?”
Ireland’s Department of Children said that Marianvale was outside the Republic’s jurisdiction, adding there were “processes ongoing in Northern Ireland to respond to these legacy issues”.
But as a Dubliner, born to parents from the Republic, Ms Buckley said she cannot understand why she is excluded from the Irish redress scheme “because I was born a few miles over the border and adopted back here”.
Who qualifies for compensation?
Under the rules, mothers who spent even one night in an eligible institution in the Republic will receive compensation. Payments start at €5,000 (£4,275) and rise incrementally based on length of stay, external. But former child residents only qualify if they spent six months or more in homes. Marianvale is not on the list of eligible institutions, but even if it was, Ms Buckley would still not be entitled to compensation because it appears she was resident for less than six months. “I wish someone would explain the six-month thing to me because we’ve suffered through life,” she said.
“There’s absolutely no humanity in this decision.”
She added she paid Irish taxes all her life and now the Irish state “isn’t recognising me”. “For me it’s not about the money, it’s about the principle,” she said. “I want to be vindicated.”
‘Where do I belong?’
Adoption records show her mother was engaged to a Tipperary man when she became pregnant, but Eileen’s family opposed her relationship. When she entered Marianvale, her fiancé was not even told he was about to become a father. The adoption was arranged by Cunamh, formerly known as the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland. “If the adoption was arranged from counties in the south and agencies in the south run by convents and nuns in the south and women from the south were in there and the children were adopted back into the south it’s just a loophole to get out of paying anybody money,” Ms Buckley said.
Border babies
Her cross-border journey was not unique. A recent report into Northern Ireland’s mother and baby homes, external calculated that more than 550 babies were moved to the Republic between 1930 and 1990. “Here in the north, the campaigners have been calling for their public inquiry and redress for more than a decade,” said solicitor Claire McKeegan, who acts on behalf of survivors of institutional abuse in Northern Ireland.
In 2021, Stormont’s leaders agreed to hold a public inquiry into mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries and workhouses north of the border. But two and a half years on, that inquiry is still to be legally established. “Obviously with the collapse of Stormont, the legislation hasn’t happened for them and many survivors and victims are no longer with us,” Ms McKeegan said.
The solicitor is due to meet First Minister Michelle O’Neill about the issue next month and said the message from survivors will be: “It must be done and it must be done now.”
For Ms Buckley though, it was the Republic’s secretive adoption system which she had to fight all her life. As a teenager she suffered serious health issues and baffled doctors ran lots of tests because they could not access her family medical records. “My mother told me that at one stage they thought it was leukaemia and that the doctors had been trying to ring the adoption agency just to try and get some history. They were like: ‘This girl is really sick, we need to know.’ And they were just met with closed doors.”
Aged 43, Ms Buckley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition she later found out runs in her birth family. She believes she missed out on earlier diagnosis and treatment due to her lack of rights to birth information when she was a teenager. A new Irish law came into force in 2022 which gave all adoptees rights to access their original birth certificate and family medical history, but adoptees complain of long delays with the new system. How many survivors get compensation?
It has been estimated there are about 58,200 people still alive who spent time in the Republic’s mother and baby homes and county homes (institutions which succeeded workhouses). The Department of Children confirmed its redress scheme will “provide financial payments to an estimated 34,000 people”.
But that means just over 40% of survivors some 24,000 people cannot apply because of the six-month rule. Awarding payments and medical benefits to all surviving residents would have doubled the cost of the scheme. “The exclusions are vast and it really is extremely unfair,” said Dr Maeve O’Rourke.
The human rights lecturer recently helped design the framework for investigating homes in Northern Ireland. Dr O’Rourke argued the Republic’s 2015-2021 mother and baby homes investigation, external was too narrowly focused and has resulted in a restricted redress scheme. She said there should have been a wider investigation into adoption across all of society, including the role of adoption agencies, maternity hospitals, “forced family separations” and illegal birth registrations. “Unfortunately, and perhaps to limit its ultimate financial liability, the Irish government insisted that it would be limited to mother and baby institutions and a sample of county homes,” she added.
Ms Buckley took part in a 2021 public consultation, external in which survivors and interested parties gave views on the design of the redress scheme. Most survivors stressed loss of the mother/child bond was the most important factor that required redress, not the time spent in homes. Ms Buckley shared her own experience during the consultation but was shocked when she realised Marianvale residents would not be part of the settlement. “I couldn’t stop crying. We bared our souls at that thing, you know? We told them how this has affected us mentally,” she said.
“For saving a few quid, we’re just collateral damage.”
Bessborough survivor: ‘The shame belongs with them’
Bessborough survivor: ‘The shame belongs with them’
Sun, 30 May, 2021 – 06:35
Maresa Fagan
Survivors of mother and baby homes and other State institutions have been let down and only an international investigation can shed light on the “human rights violations” of the past, according to Bessborough survivor Terri Harrison. The 66-year-old Dublin campaigner is one of 13 women from Ireland and the North who have requested that the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigate the ‘violent legacy’ of mother and baby homes, Bessborough survivor: ‘The shame belongs with them’e laundries, and industrial schools. The recent ICC request made by Belfast-based legal firm KRW Law is seeking a preliminary examination into whether the institutional abuse exposed in recent reports and inquiries amounted to “crimes against humanity”. Earlier this year, the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation found that around 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through 18 State-funded and church-run institutions examined and that around 9,000 babies and children died. The legacy of the institutions, which operated for more than seven decades, has left deep scars across society, from the mothers whose babies were taken away to the children who were adopted or who died and were buried in pits. The commission findings were met with widespread criticism from survivors and have led to several legal challenges against the State. For Terri, the final report was a “whitewash” as it failed to acknowledge or atone for the abduction and forced disappearances of thousands of young girls and women pregnant out of wedlock, their “stolen” babies, or for the children who died. “There wasn’t a whisper of humanity in the report,” Terri says, adding that it failed to address the issue of neglect and starvation or the 922 unaccounted for babies in the Bessborough facility in Cork.
‘Pregnant from Ireland’
Terri is one of more than 2,500 PFIs Irish women or girls who were officially recorded as ‘pregnant from Ireland’ and brought back from the UK to a mother and baby home. It was 1973 when the Crusade and Rescue Society, an English-based Catholic charity, “abducted” the expectant 18-year-old from London and a nun and priest escorted her by car to the airport and onwards to the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork. It was a day forever etched in Terri’s mind. “I will never forget the door and the click of the door when it closed. I was just left there in the hallway. I have never felt as alone in my life as I did in that moment,” she says.
“When I stood in that hallway I lost me. I was given a house number and house name and was shown to a bed and locker. I just sat there and cried and cried and said to myself ‘this is the bowels of hell’.”
While Terri managed to escape from Bessborough and return to Dublin, she was tracked down and sent to St Patrick’s mother and baby home on the Navan Rd, where she gave birth to a baby boy, Niall, who was later “taken” for adoption. There was a cry, a primal scream, that you would hear regularly when a mother discovered that their baby was gone. “It was wrenching, like a cry from an animal,” she says.
Forty-eight years on, the pain and sense of loss remains, but Terri continues to hold out hope that she may someday reconnect with Niall, who she describes as her “shadow child”. “No matter where we were or what we were doing I always pictured him at the age he should be. I visualised him everywhere and at Christmas time there was always a present under the tree for him,” she says.
Terri is only too aware that her experience is not unique and last year got involved in setting up a support group, Society of Survivors, to enable women to share their experiences.
Carrying the secrets
Some women, she says, still carry the loss, silence, shame, and secrets today: “I know women in their eighties to this day who have not told anyone, including their husbands or families.”
Survivors, she explains, have endured ‘living bereavement’ even though there was no loss of life. “No death occurred but each stage of your life presents a new bereavement that amplifies all those years of loss. The loss of freedom and liberty, the loss of motherhood, the loss of the right to breastfeed your own child, it just goes on and on and it never stops until you die.”
Women and girls, some as young as 12, were “dehumanised” in the institutions, which could not be called a home, Terri says: “We weren’t residents. We were interned. We were incarcerated. We were recorded by our offence. I was down as my first offence. The only difference is we didn’t get a court of law or a trial to find us guilty of anything.”
An independent international investigation, she believes, is the only way to uncover the true scale of the “human rights violations” and “inhumane” treatment that occurred. “There is a huge correlation between us and those who were incarcerated in war camps. You were 100% at the mercy of your captives. You could do nothing without their approval,” she says.
Any attempts to attribute what happened to the social norms of the time was a “cop-out”, Terri says, adding that it amounted to human trafficking, involving several sectors of the State and society, and that women and young girls were denied access to information and their rights, such as the right to see their child under the 1952 Adoption Act. “Who gave anybody the right to lock me away and take my child? Nobody will answer that,” she says.
The long-time campaigner, who has penned a play, No More Secrets, No More Lies, based on her own experiences, says the Government needs to acknowledge what happened and support survivors. An enhanced medical card, she says, does not compare to the Health Amendment Act (HAA) card provided to victims of the contaminated blood products scandal, which is what survivors are looking for as a “gesture of kindness”. Any shame around these institutions today, Terri adds, lies firmly with the State and Government, and not survivors. “We are just a pain in their side or a toothache they want to get rid of. They don’t know what to do with us because we’re an embarrassment; we’re bringing embarrassment to the whole culture of this country,” Terri says.
“But I’ll keep saying this until I die; I like the word shame now because I know exactly where it belongs; the shame belongs with them.”
Society of Survivors support line: 085 8069925/26
Mother and baby home survivors’ stories published: ‘I was told I was going’
Mother and baby home survivors’ stories published: ‘I was told I was going’
27 September 2022
“I became pregnant and when my mother found out I was taken immediately to a doctor and within a very short period of time I found myself in a Good Shepherd mother-and-baby home.”
This is part of one woman’s personal testimony about her experience of mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland. Her account has been published along with a number of others, running to hundreds of pages and made available on the Quote oral history website run by Queen’s University Belfast, external (QUB).
Those who experienced life in workhouses and Magdalene laundries have told their stories and the transcripts also include evidence from children born in the homes. The testimonies have been anonymised but have been published with the full permission of those who gave them. One woman, referred to as LC, was sent to a Good Shepherd mother-and-baby home when she became pregnant, aged 17. “I was just told I was going and that was it,” she added.
“I was put in a car with the local parish priest and my mother and off I went.”
LC’s baby was adopted against her wishes but later in life she was able to reunite with her adopted child. A mother referred to as HS also entered a Good Shepherd home when she was pregnant, aged 19. She said that she was made to feel “isolated and sinful” there. DH, meanwhile, was born in a mother-and-baby home and then adopted. The impact that it’s had on me as a person has been significant,” he said.
DH had begun a process on reuniting with his birth mother when he was in his 30s.
Stigma of pregnancy outside marriage
Mother-and-baby institutions housed women and girls who became pregnant outside marriage. There was stigma attached to pregnancy outside of marriage and women and girls were admitted by families, doctors, priests and state agencies. The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses that operated across the island of Ireland. About a third of women admitted to the homes were aged under 19 and most were aged from 20 to 29. The youngest was 12 and the oldest 44. A number were the victims of sexual crime, including rape and incest. Numbers of entrants peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before a rapid reduction in the 1980s. The oral evidence had informed a major Stormont report into mother-and-baby homes and Magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland, which was published in January 2021. It found that 10,500 women went through mother-and-baby homes in Northern Ireland and 3,000 were admitted into Magdalene laundries. The report detailed often harsh conditions and abuse suffered by some of those admitted to eight mother-and-baby homes, a number of former workhouses and four Magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland. Some women said they had been detained against their will, were used as unpaid labour and had to give up babies for adoption. The experts from QUB and Ulster University who carried out the research for the 2021 report had said they intended to make some of the transcripts of evidence “available for consultation by members of the public”. That has now been done with full transcripts of testimonies from 24 individuals about their experiences.
‘Traumatic and upsetting’
Thirteen of the testimonies are from “birth mothers” women who gave birth while living in the institutions. Five are testimonies from the children of birth mothers, one from another relative and five from “other observers” of the institutions. The “other observers” include an elderly retired priest, a woman whose father worked in a Good Shepherd convent, a retired midwife, a woman who had lived in one of the Sacred Heart homes and a woman who knew a number of residents of one of the homes. Details have been removed from the transcripts that would identify any of those who agreed that their experiences could be published. An introduction to the transcripts said that a “range of contrasting and complex testimonies” had been collected. “They ranged from testimonies that were highly critical of the mother and baby institutions and Magdalene laundries through to very different narratives from individuals who worked within them,” it said.
“Readers will no doubt be aware that the testimony they will encounter is often traumatic and upsetting. The transcripts reveal many birth mothers were pressured to give up a child for adoption. Several relate testimony about various forms of mistreatment. The latter included a range of details, spanning regimental institutional regimes that imposed cleaning chores on heavily pregnant women through to, in a very small number of cases, more serious allegations of sexual abuse.”
The interviews were carried out by Prof Sean O’Connell of QUB and Dr Olivia Dee. Prof O’Connell told BBC News NI that he wanted to pay tribute to the courage of all of those who had been involved in the process and came forward to give oral evidence. Following the publication of the research report in January 2021, a Truth Recovery Design Panel which had been established by the Stormont Executive subsequently recommended that a public inquiry be held into the institutions in Northern Ireland. The PSNI has also launched an investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse in the institutions.
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Listen here to BBC News NI’s podcast ‘Assume Nothing: The Last Request’ about a man who was born in a mother-and-baby home and his last wish to track down his birth mother
Reflecting
I had very good intentions of getting my story written here but life has a habit of getting in the way. Different projects/hobbies have started up again such as writing knitting and having pets who are life savers.
My first 18 years on this planet were very average and I was very good girl not getting into trouble apart from the usual of maybe getting home late, fighting with my sister and so on. This changed after getting into a relationship then splitting up around my 19th birthday. It devastated me at the time as the lad believed a lie told by his cousin and refused to listen to the truth.
Eventually I knew I was pregnant but didn’t tell the father as I was angry and hurting. I kept quiet long enough not to be pressured into having an abortion although certain people who can’t defend themselves now would have disputed that. My mother was furious, my father didn’t say much, and she was determined my baby would be adopted. I refused to agree to that and wouldn’t discuss it. My baby needed me not strangers, I already loved my unborn baby.
I still have moments when memories creep up on me suddenly that I force myself not to cry over. My mother was so cruel yet I couldn’t talk to anybody as I didn’t think they would believe me. Fear of my mother finding out scared me too much to talk to anybody as she would make me suffer emotionally and verbally behind closed doors. I loved her but we just seemed to bring out the worst of each other yet in public it was the opposite. It’s sad as we did have so much in common such as reading the same types of book, knitting, music, films, television and so on. I lived for the happy times when we were all happy.
Nanny still looking after couple’s surrogate baby 10 months after birth
Nanny still looking after couple’s surrogate baby 10 months after birth
Kristie Baysinger, a nanny from Texas, took to TikTok to share the heartbreaking story of 10-month-old surrogate baby Alexander in a video that has been viewed almost one million times
By Paige Holland Showbiz Audience Writer
17:14, 17 JUN 2021Updated17:18, 17 JUN 2021
A nanny who was hired to look after a couple’s baby has revealed how she ended up raising him for the first 10 months of his life. Kristie Baysinger, a nanny from Texas, collected baby Alexander from his surrogate in Oklahoma after his parents were unable to fly from the UK to pick him up due to coronavirus restrictions. But little did she know she’d still be caring for him almost a year down the line. She shared the heartbreaking story of how rewarding, yet challenging it has been in a TikTok video that has racked up almost one million views. In the clip, she explained: “My agency called me and said: ‘Hey, can you come pick up this new surrogate baby from this surrogate who does not want to take him home?’ So, we went to Oklahoma to pick him up.”
However, the process of getting a social security number has been “a struggle,” she admitted. We’ve been getting no feedback. We’ve called social security administration and they say we’re in the loop just like everybody else is. We’re just doing our best over here and just raising this little boy and just being as sweet as we can until he can return home to his parents.”
She went on to say how they’re waiting to see whether his parents can get their passports sorted so they can come and pick him up, if not she’ll be travelling to Scotland with Alexander and her family to “help with the transition.” “They miss him terribly and want to see him, and they talk to him daily,” she said.
“Hopefully his social security gets here soon so that I can apply for his passport and we can get him back home.”
In another video, the nanny, who is a mum of three children, said that she treats Alexander like one of her own kids. She explained: “We give him all the hugs and love and attention and everything that he needs so that he can grow. We don’t hold back, he’s spoiled, he’s loved, and played with, and sang to. Just like he was my own kid.”
Since being posted, the original video has racked up more than 113,000 likes and hundreds of comments from people who were heartbroken by the situation. One person said: “This is the saddest situation ever. Poor baby when he has to go to strangers who are his actual family by no fault of their own.”
Another added: “Poor baby. The trauma he is going to go through once he’s away from you. Breaks my heart just thinking about it.”
While another wrote: “So sad his parents are missing his first year of life.”
Groundhog Day
I haven’t felt like posting for some time due to COVID-19 and lockdown as each day seems the same. We had one bit of good news though that the latest great-niece, Savanna, was born on the 29th April 2020. Had it not been for lockdown we would have seen Savanna by now as it was my sister and brother-in-law’s 40th wedding anniversary on the 10th May 2020. We will be very happy when travelling restrictions have been lifted.
Tempers have been tested over the past weeks which isn’t helped by the fact that we both suffer from depression. On top of that, neither of us has been sleeping well but it doesn’t help that our normal routine has been disrupted. I am really missing not being able to swim as it helps my joints. Both my shoulders have been constantly aching which also doesn’t help when trying to sleep.
We have also had four new additions as our little Storm has had kittens. They are so cute and it will be at least another four weeks yet before they can be rehomed provided a certain person resists the urge to keep them all – so far it’s only one.