ADOPTION STORIES
Maeve Sheehan talks to three women hurt by crime, lies and deceit
MARIA Boylan accidentally discovered two years ago that she was illegally adopted. She had been researching her family tree, never questioning that she might not share her parents’ lineage. She was tracking down distant relatives in Devon, providing her DNA to an online company that runs it through its system, looking for a match.
The results came back a month or so later, offering matches with lists of family names she did not recognise.
Maria thought it was odd, but, still not suspecting she was adopted, she continued burrowing down the DNA rabbit hole until, in August 2019, she found herself virtually face-to-face with a woman whom science said was her full biological sister.
“But I didn’t have a sister,” she said. She sent a tentative message. “The first question she asked me in reply was, ‘Are you also adopted?’ I was utterly gobsmacked.”
At 61, Maria had discovered she was someone else entirely. “I have full DNA evidence now to prove that my birth cert was false. I am not who I thought I was. I was illegally adopted because there is no formal paperwork for me,” she said.
In one sense, she felt relief. She grew up in a loving family in Clonskeagh, Dublin, but felt she never fitted in. “I always felt like a square peg in a round hole. I had dark eyes and my parents had blue eyes,” she said.
“I always noticed when I walked into a room, adults stopped and looked at me. They were smiling, but I knew they were talking about me, and I felt as a child something was wrong with me, so I grew up with this feeling.”
Aged 23, she asked her parents if she was adopted. “They categorically denied it,” she said, waving her birth certificate, which listed them as her parents and their home address at Harold’s Cross as her place of birth. “I believed them,” she said. Now she knows her instinct was right.
Maria, with the help of her children, set about finding out who she was. They joined an extended online community, seeking out DNA matches, trawling through online records over many hours, late into the night.
Michael Fox, whom DNA showed to be her second cousin, helped her find other relatives. Eventually, she pieced together fragments of her parents’ lives.
They were from Meath and were engaged but never married. Sheila, her sister, was born in 1955, Maria in 1958. Sheila was illegally adopted from the Prague nursing home in Terenure. “Possibly, our mother had me there as well,” Maria said. “I don’t actually know where I was born.”
She suspects a doctor who was a family friend, a man whose name has since cropped up in other illegal adoptions, may have arranged her own. She also suspects her adoptive mother may have put on a “charade” of being pregnant with her.
Tusla is working with Maria and searching for her records. She is also being supported by Barnardo’s adoption tracing service, and is one of 15,000 people the children’s charity has estimated were illegally adopted.
“I just want to know where I was born and my correct date of birth,” she said. “That is what I am looking for.”
The positives of her discovery are that she can trace her own daughter’s mysterious, rich auburn hair to her birth family. She has discovered her sister and six half-brothers, but she is angry.
She loves her parents, but struggles with the secret they kept from her. “I don’t want to apportion blame to anyone,” she said. “I think all parties are culpable, but I think to discover this story at my age in such a cruel way is unforgivable. It is devastating not just for me, but for my own husband, John, and my children.”
She is “very, very angry” that the State issued her with a false birth certificate. “I don’t want to hear they didn’t know,” she said. “Am I valid? I don’t know. Anything I have to show who I am is false. My birth cert is wrong. My passport is not even correct. In law, I am still the legal daughter of my biological mother because I was never actually adopted.”
Maria is determined to break free of the secrets and lies of her past and hopes to encourage other people of her generation to do the same.
“I hear the word ‘shame’ used a lot. That bothers me. I don’t feel ashamed. I did nothing wrong,” she said. “The more of us who speak out, especially people our age, the more people will listen. And I will talk to anyone who will listen.”
‘She thinks her adoptive mother may have put on a charade of being pregnant’