‘My struggle to trace my adopted brother on Facebook helped me to reunite over 1,200 Romanian children with their birth families’
A MOTHER OF FIVE, who was inspired by finding her longlost brother after almost three decades apart, has reunited more than 1,200 Romanian children worldwide with their birth families.
Galway-based Ileana Cunniffe Baiescu (42) has dedicated her life to reconnecting Romanian adoptees from across the globe using Facebook.
During the 1990s more than 1,000 Romanian children were adopted by Irish families. Today, more than 60 of them have reconnected with their biological families through the efforts of Ileana.
It all started in January 2015 when she began the search for her own brother Victor, who had been adopted from Romania at the height of the Communist regime.
She had earlier traced her sister Dana, who had been adopted on the same day as Victor, who was just two years old when an American couple adopted him.
Struggling to find the words for the sorrow she felt at the loss, Ileana – who was 13 at the time – says: “I could remember everything about him; everything about his face. I would walk around and say to myself, ‘I have to find them. My purpose is to find them. I am not accepting this life without knowing him’.”
Ileana, who moved from Romania to Ireland in 1996, set up a Facebook page called ‘The Never Forgotten Children of Romania’.
The page quickly gathered thousands of followers worldwide. Speaking from her home in the small village of Killimordaly, Ileana explains how the sorrow of her own family’s situation inspired her.
“I am the oldest of 10 children to two parents who really did do the best they could.
“Unfortunately life was very difficult under the Communist regime and my parents made the difficult decision to adopt away six of my siblings.
“Four of them came to Ireland into two separate loving families. The other two were separated into two families.”
Ileana had been staying with her aunt the summer the children were adopted.
“I never had a chance to say goodbye to them. To come home at the end of the summer and to find that nearly none of the siblings was there any more… I chose to go back with my aunt that I had spent the summer with as I couldn’t face the empty place.”
Ileana’s aunt managed to get the addresses of two families who had adopted her siblings – one in Ireland and one in Belgium. “I wrote every month. The letter to Belgium came back unopened, but the Irish letters did not – they just weren’t answered.
“Then, nearly two years later, I was back from school late, it was dark, and a policeman came to my aunt’s house and asked for me.
“He said there is somebody down here that wants to see her – two people from Ireland.
“I was peeling potatoes at the time and listening in to the conversation. I was standing at the top of the stairs with a knife in my hand and a potato half peeled and somehow that potato bounced down on top of the Irish people and the policeman.
“They came in. It was the mam of my adopted siblings and her sister and a translator. It was the most incredible thing. They gave me pictures and gifts. They came every year to visit me for the next three years and then, when I turned 18, they got my visa to come to Ireland.
“Over the years, I found five of my adopted siblings but not Victor. I started the page to find him and I succeeded 13 months later.”
It was through another page – ‘Adopted from Romania’ – that the breakthrough came.
“She made me an admin on the page, and there were hundreds of unanswered messages from people looking for their families. My first thought was, what if he is there?
“So I rushed around the house and put the kids to bed early. It felt like hours and hours reading messages.
“It was 3am, I was about to go to bed, and I was thinking wasn’t it very unlucky for me that my brother was not there.
“I turned off the light, but then it occurred to me I didn’t check the inactive profiles. I could still read the messages.
“I went back to my phone and read each one and would you believe, there he was.
“And I could not believe it. I think it was 4am and everyone in the house here was asleep.
“I was in a different world. I don’t know if I was even breathing any more. I had to open the window and take a few breaths of fresh air.
“I contacted him straight away and, to my shock, he had answered me by 6am. I didn’t sleep at all that night.
After Victor was found, people on the Facebook page thought she would give up helping. But Ileana says she wants to help other families.
“I’m still here. And I will continue, I don’t know for how long, but I will.”
She says she knows that many children were adopted
‘It was the most incredible thing. They gave me pictures and gifts’
‘I contacted him straight away and, to my shock, he had answered me by 6am’
by loving families and given a good education but they still wanted to connect.
“I never once thought there was such a world out there. So many children adopted from Romania are looking for their families.
“I was never educated in this subject because it was something people around me never talked about.”