Madam, - We were very moved by Anne Dempsey's article in your edition of June 25th highlighting the difficulties faced by Theresa Tinggal in searching for her natural mother. It is worth mentioning, however, that the "de facto adoption" in which she was acquired by her adoptive parents was a criminal act of illegal birth registration. Further, it took place after 1952, when legal adoption was freely available in Ireland.
Our organisation represents mothers and fathers who have lost children to adoption at any time in the past. Over the past seven years we have given information and advice to many hundreds of people as they search for their children.
We have come across some cases where mothers have discovered, sometimes years later, that their children were not registered as having been born to them. They are usually overwhelmed by trauma and panic when they turn to us for help in trying to prove that their child really existed and was in fact adopted.
In some cases they signed "adoption papers" which were subsequently proven to be false. In these instances, the adoptions and birth registrations were handled by GPs, nursing homes, priests, adoption agencies or adoptive parents. And we emphasise that in no case was any of this deception carried out at the request of the natural mother. She was usually powerless, under the control of figures in authority, and in no position to make any demands.
It really must be asked: Who should be held accountable for this? And who is going to sort out the lives destroyed by this large-scale criminal deception? We have been making submissions to governments for over 20 years on the subject of adoption law reform. And in researching the history of Irish adoption in the National Archive we made an interesting discovery: the main organisations which lobbied in the 1930s and 1940s for the introduction of legal adoption in Ireland were actually demanding the destruction of childrens' birth records upon adoption.
It is to the credit of our honourable public servants that they refused to countenance such a move.
But this is small comfort to those Irish citizens whose identities were completely expunged, as well as to their mothers and fathers who are seeking to re-unite with them despite the enormous barriers imposed by false records and broken paper-trails.
We run support meetings on the first Tuesday of every month at Baggot Street Community Hospital, Upper Baggot Street, Dublin 4. These and other problems can be shared with others who have suffered loss through adoption. - Yours, etc.,
BERNIE HAROLD, Chairperson, Natural Parents Network of Ireland, PO Box 6714, Dublin 4.