‘Nuns fobbed me off when looking for son’

Mother tells court she wrote letters and sent gifts

A WOMAN who was separated from her son for more than 50 years has told the High Court she wrote a series of letters and sent baby clothes to him via the St Patrick’s Guild adoption society in Dublin.

Tressa Donnelly Reeves and her son Patrick Farrell are suing St Patrick’s Guild, the State and the Attorney General for damages arising from an illegal adoption in 1961. They all deny the charges.

Mr Farrell, who Mrs Donnelly Reeves named André, was registered as the birth son of his adoptive parents and christened Patrick. Mrs Donnelly Reeves alleges she spent more than 50 years looking for him but was ‘fobbed off’ at every turn.

She told the court she wrote letters from her home in Surrey in the UK for many years after Claim: Mrs Donnelly Reeves flying to Dublin to give birth to her child in secret after her staunchly Catholic parents made arrangements for his adoption.

The 79-year-old mother of five, recalled letters she wrote to St Patrick’s Guild asking for photos and updates on André but said she never received much information. In one letter received on May 15, 1961, she said: ‘I am sending a little suit for André.’ In another, dated April 21, 1961, Ms Donnelly wrote: ‘I am so very glad that little André has a good home to go to… I hope he is being good. I know he has a huge stomach and eats like a horse.’

In response, she received a letter from the sister in charge on July 11, 1961, saying: ‘André is doing really well and has grown quite big, I have asked for a photograph.’

After Mrs Donnelly Reeves married and had her four daughters, she returned to Ireland in the 1970s to try and trace her son. She told the court that she travelled to St Patrick’s offices in Lower Abbey Street in Dublin. Once inside, she came faceto-face with a nun and asked her for information about André. Giving evidence, she said: ‘When I talked to her, she pulled out stuff below her, she didn’t leave the room and said no there’s nothing there.

‘She said: “Adopted children rarely look for the parents and the boys never do.”’

Mrs Donnelly Reeves then went to the clinic on the Howth Road where she had given birth to her son on March 13 1961.

‘I went up the steps to the big front door. Kathleen answered... she was Kathleen Maher. She had been my midwife and friend, She said: “Oh I knew you’d be back.” She didn’t invite me in.

‘She said there was traffic of Irish children to America and there was no paperwork.’

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Mrs Donnelly Reeves was finally told her son was not in America but instead had been adopted by a couple in Carlow.

Patrick Farrell was eventually reunited with his birth mother in 2013 when St Patrick’s Guild and the Adoption Authority of Ireland made arrangements for them to meet. The case continues next Tuesday.

‘Children rarely seek their parents’