DEIRDRE: ‘A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS’
From the moment Wexford activist and former councillor Deirdre Wadding walked through the doors of Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork, where she gave birth to her eldest son in 1981, she became a different person and her life was never the same again.
Last week, following the publication of the report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, Deirdre found her self back in Bessborough, walking the corridors and lying on the metal trolley where she gave birth at the age of 18, before her baby was adopted. In a powerful article, Deirdre writes about the experience and how it affected her entire life, and she gives her reaction to the findings of the Commission.
‘Adoption means a lifetime sentence, a wound that never heals. Speaking out matters and I will continue to do so for as long as it is necessary’, said Deirdre whose story had a positive ending when she was reunited with her son in 2000, unlike so many others.
IT HAS been a difficult and emotionally challenging few months for survivors of Mother and Baby Homes since the controversy around the Bill surfaced at the end of October and in recent days, the publication of the long-awaited report of the Commission of Investigation.
As someone who spent time in two mother and baby homes in the early 1980s (for a number of reasons of ethical complexity I only share the details of the first experience in Bessborough, something I hope to change this year) I am impacted directly by the emotional triggering caused by recent events. How much harder for my older sister survivors, some of whom I know personally, who were there in more brutal times.
These past few months have been re-traumatising for all of us and to hear the report deny the existence of forced adoptions and to try to apportion blame to the whole of society is a slap in the face to survivors, as was the despicable leaking of the report before it was brought to us.
I am one of the fortunate ones, I know my children, all of them are alive and well. I got to meet my first born when he was 19. He has met my subsequent family, his half siblings and I have met his adoptive parents and sister. I know he had a good life and was happy and the person he is now is testament to the love and care he was given. I am beyond grateful to have him in my life and to have a positive relationship with him, although with his relocation to the United States, we don’t get to see each other often. He’s married with a child and so I am a grandmother and there is a second generation of being blood but not Nana as I am mother but not mam. It’s a bittersweet thing but I am blessed that I found him. I want all separated mothers and children to have that same chance .
We are told the Minister is committed to enacting legislation to ensure that all adoptees will have a right to know who they are and that we mothers will have access to our records.
I have shared many times the story of my Bessborough experience but it’s worth saying that although we may not think of 1981 as the dark ages, Ireland was still a very repressive country, a State hand in glove with the Church. I had a good childhood with loving parents. But something I never anticipated when I discovered I was pregnant was the force of reaction from my parents, particularly my mother, who were very Catholic. There was a huge focus on mortal sin and my mother really turned into a different person before my eyes, calling me awful names.
It took me years – to be honest not until after her death in 1990 – to make my peace with her and come to an understanding of how she did what she believed was right and what she thought was best for me My lovely gentle dad, who was so good and my rock in later years, really took a back seat thinking it was ‘women’s business’. I discovered years later that he was unaware of many of the conversations that had taken place between me and my mother and it meant a huge amount to me when one day he said he believed in hindsight that they hadn’t handled it the right way.
However to say my family were the only factors accountable would be incorrect. It is an insult to survivors, families and the broader society to try and make everyone collectively culpable as my People Before Profit comrade Bríd Smith, quoting a survivor, said in the Dáil: ‘Everyone is responsible so no one is responsible.’
There is a reason my mother reacted in such an extreme manner, a lifetime of conditioning and brainwashing by the church to see sexuality as the most heinous sin of all. The church dictated to society and the State was in complete collusion. If we cast our minds back to Dev’s vice act of 1936 we see that Ireland was a theocracy with policies directed by the church.
That Unholy Catholic oppressive Ireland, of the kind the Irish Freedom Party and the National Party would like us to reprise, was the backdrop for survivors and those long passed who found themselves unmarried and pregnant in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s.
The government would like us to believe there was no forced adoption, this is patently untrue. Are we to believe that women who tell us of being told to dress their child because someone was waiting in a car to take them away were in agreement? That they had made an informed choice, had been asked if this was what they wanted?
Even in my day in Bessborough in 1981 nobody ever asked had you considered your options, whether you needed support to enable you to keep your child or indeed whether you were ok to have him adopted. The assumption was that you would do the right ‘thing’ and make up for your sin by giving up your child to a good home with two married Catholic parents who would give him so much better a life than you could.
I clearly remember my mother saying to me that if I kept my son, I would be the most selfish girl in the world. That perspective was brainwashed into her – born in 1926 – by a theocratic Ireland.
My story has a positive ending as regards my first born. We reunited in the year 2000 when he was 19. So many have not been so blessed. So many mothers don’t know where their children are, so many adult adoptees don’t know who they are or what their medical history is.
One positive commitment from the report is that legislation will be enacted to facilitate this.
The State apology is also welcome as is that from the Bon Secours order but words, as they say, are cheap. Actions are what count and the aftermath of the Ryan Report and the apology to the Magdalene women does not inspire confidence. As someone involved in a number of survivors’ groups and in touch with a number of other mothers, I can say the general response to the report is ranging from disappointment to anger with the word ‘whitewash’ being used repeatedly.
What of the illegal adoptions that took place here where adoptive parents’ names were put on birth certificates or where underage girls signed although unable to give legal consent? What of all those babies adopted by American families when adoption wasn’t even legal here before 1953 and yet the Department of Foreign Affairs issued passports for children to be brought to America to be adopted there .The State colluded with the Church and failed to protect women and children or to adequately monitor what was happening in the Mother and Baby homes despite concerns about their welfare and the incredibly high mortality rate. The sheer volume of deaths is utterly shocking and is testament to neglect and an absence of value of these innocent children.
Testimony of survivors, which in the case of Mother and Baby homes predominantly means the mothers, is the living history of what happened there in those grim institutions. I have heard horrendous stories from women of their lived experience.
What we need to see now is action – a full apology from all the orders involved and a commitment to redress is essential. The reality of forced adoptions must be acknowledged and the sites must be investigated to establish where children and in some cases mothers are buried.
No construction work should take place in Bessborough or anywhere else where there are suspected burials.
There must be criminal investigation and those responsible held to account.
The assets of the orders should be seized and used for redress, services for survivors and memorials It is time now to fully separate Church and State Canon Law should never have been allowed to dictate to the law of the land and should certainly no longer influence policy in any shape or form.
Religion is a personal matter, we should respect each other’s beliefs but they have no role in the business of the State, in schools or in our healthcare system.
I will over the next few weeks and longer read the full report, almost 3000 pages ( just picture six reams of printer paper stacked on top of each other). It is hard to respond in a comprehensive manner without reading it all .
The report was made public last week shortly after a webinar to brief survivors. I found it tricky getting on to the webinar and had to get help from my 22-year-old son. I know some survivors who couldn’t figure it out and didn’t manage to get on. There was no direct conversation with the Minister but we could ask questions or make comments in the chat box, only one or two were addressed when the Minister finished going through a summary of the report. There was no time to familiarise ourselves with the contents or even process it before it was publicly presented and the media flurry began. National, international and local media obviously all wanted to know what survivors’ response was before there was any chance to take it in.
For me that night was a sleepless one and in my mind I was back in Bessborough, walking those corridors and going up and down the great wooden staircase and above all lying on that metal trolley before I gave birth. I felt again the acute pain of that moment of separation, the desperate loving hopeless embrace before I left my baby son and Bessborough with a broken heart.
The trajectory of my life, my emotional and psychological well being, relationships, the person I was all changed from the moment I walked through the doors of Bessborough. I became a different person, literally being called a different name and after I left I was never the same again.
Adoption means a lifetime sentence, a wound that never heals, an ever-present sorrow hidden away in the depths, compounded by secrecy, guilt and shame.
That is why speaking out matters and I will continue to do that for as long as it’s necessary to support my sister survivors and the adult children who need and have a right to answers.
I would like to think Ireland can now move forward into a new more just and egalitarian era but time will tell.
I FELT AGAIN THE ACUTE PAIN OF THAT MOMENT OF SEPARATION, THE DESPERATE LOVING HOPELESS EMBRACE BEFORE I LEFT MY BABY SON AND BESSBOROUGH WITH A BROKEN HEART