Should adopted children have the right to contact their natural mother?

Paul RedmondAbout Us, Adoption, Adoption Trafficking, Rights

HAVING BEEN BORN in a mother and baby home, I am among perhaps a few hundred members of the active adoption community. But there are also about 50,000 silent adoptees in Ireland today, mostly aged 45 and upwards. At present, all natural mothers are “protected” by the constitutional right to privacy, Many do not want it. But some need it. I …

Screaming Rooms and Banished Babies: Ireland

Paul RedmondAdoption, Adoption Survivor, Adoption Trafficking, Europe, Long Lost Family, Rights

The sad history of where I was born…. THE ORDER OF the Sacred Heart nuns arrived in Ireland in 1922 within months of the formation of the Irish Free state after the civil war. They were invited over from England by the newly-formed Irish government to deal with the ‘problem’ of women having babies outside wedlock. They bought a 200-acre …

Over 9,000 Irish women or ‘inmates’ went through these doors, forced to repent

Paul RedmondAdoption, Adoption Trafficking, Rights, Videos

Originally known as Pelletstown and later as Saint Patrick’s Mother and Baby home, 361 Navan Road, Dublin 7, it was originally a public Workhouse and probably designated a ’Special institution’ exclusively for single mothers in 1904. It was converted for such usage in 1906 by George Sheridan at a cost of £11,000. Pelletstown was owned and financed by the Poor …

My illegal adoption was kept secret for nearly FIVE decades

Adoptionland NewsAdoption, Adoption Trafficking, Agency Complaints, Excerpts, Rights

Theresa Tinggal reckons the way she was handed over to Kathleen and husband Jimmy – the man she called Dad – was a form of child trafficking For nearly five decades Theresa Tinggal felt like the odd one out in her ­family – but had no idea why, reveals the Sunday People. Then a remark by an uncle led to …

Philomena author on scandal of Ireland’s 60,000 babies ‘sold’ by nuns to rich American families

Adoptionland NewsAdoption, Adoption Survivor, Adoption Trafficking, Agency Complaints, Excerpts, Long Lost Family, Rights

The film Philomena, starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, tells the true story of a mother’s quest to find the son taken from her by the Catholic Church in 1950s Ireland. She was one of an estimated 60,000 women whose babies were given to new parents in exchange for cash donations. As part of a new BBC2 show, Martin Sixsmith, …