We must right a historic wrong: MPs in call for forced adoption apology
WOMEN forced to give up their babies for adoption in the Fifties and Sixties told yesterday of their decades of heartache as MPs urged the Government to apologise for the scandal.
More than half a million newborns were taken from young unmarried women at a time when being a single mother was often seen as shameful.
Many of the adoptions were arranged by agencies run by the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Salvation Army, with the tacit approval of the Government.
Some of the women did not see their children again for decades and never recovered from the trauma.
Following Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar’s apology last month for decades of illegal adoptions in which adoptive parents of infants taken from their mothers were registered as the birth parents, an MP yesterday said it was time for Britain to ‘right a historic wrong’.
Last year, children’s minister Robert Goodwill rejected calls for a public inquiry into the issue, saying it was unlikely to uncover new facts.
But a cross-party group of more than 20 MPs now wants the Government to follow Mr Varadkar’s example and make a formal apology.
Tomorrow, Labour MPs Alison McGovern and Stephen Twigg will call for a Parliamentary debate on the ‘terrible injustice’.
Mr Twigg said: ‘This will provide the Government with an opportunity to right a historic wrong and apologise to those British mothers and children who were adopted under similar circumstances.’ Among those speaking about how their lives were destroyed is Veronica Smith, 77, who became pregnant at 24 when she was unmarried and working as a nurse at a Butlin’s camp in 1964. She was sent to a hostel run by a Catholic organisation in south London before her baby girl – whom she named Angela – was taken away at just a week old.
Although she later tracked down her daughter, she had by then had a nervous breakdown, which she blames on the trauma decades earlier. She said: ‘It has blighted my life. I had no further children, and I didn’t get married until 12 years ago. It’s a big injustice. The churches and the authorities have a lot to answer for.’
The treatment of single pregnant women in Ireland was highlighted by the 2013 film Philomena, starring Dame Judi Dench, but campaigners say the situation in Britain has been overlooked.
Felicity Davies, 64, was hit with a poker by her mother after she became pregnant at 15, and was then sent to a Church of England home for unmarried mothers. She said having her newborn daughter Mary taken away was ‘awful’, telling The Observer newspaper: ‘I remember standing outside the hospital waiting for a bus and feeling a part of me was missing.’ She is still married to Mary’s father and had other children, but was unsuccessful in contacting her until her daughter hired a private detective to track Mrs Davies down almost 40 years later.
‘The feeling of loss persisted and caused me pain and unresolved deep anger for many years until I had help to resolve it,’ she said.
‘Attitudes to women like me were astonishing. I’d like an acknowledgement of the suffering these women have been through. A lot of it is tied up with the churches.’
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, has apologised for its role in the ‘hurt’ inflicted on unwed mothers, while the Church of England and Salvation Army also expressed regret.
Were you forced to give up your child for adoption during the Fifties or Sixties? Email femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk