Sixty years on, the pain is still etched on Sue’s face as she recalls the moment her precious baby was taken away from her. Sue was just 17 years old when she discovered she was pregnant in 1966, bringing shame on her family that resulted in life-long trauma.
Packed off to a mother-and-baby home run by the Church of England, Sue was forced to scrub floors while heavily pregnant and pray for forgiveness before giving birth alone. She says: “We were institutionalised. We were told, these are your cleaning materials. Every day you’ll get up and you’ll have to clean. We had to do a lot of praying and a lot of asking for forgiveness. I was in labour for 28 hours. I didn’t have any pain relief at all. My mum was there, but she wasn’t allowed in with me. I remember it being quite traumatic. And then the baby was whisked away. She was beautiful.”
Sue is one of thousands of women in the UK postwar era who were mistreated, sent to homes and pressured to give up their newborns, since pregnancy out of wedlock was such a taboo. Now more is coming to light about a pattern of ill treatment at the hands of the Church, the government and the health services at the time. In a heartbreaking edition of ITV1’s Tonight, Forced Adoption: Britain’s Silent Scandal, women and adopted children speak out about their search for answers and their fight for justice and an apology.
Sue, who has never spoken out before, is still extremely traumatised and recalls how she didn’t really understand the mechanics of getting pregnant at that time and was scared to tell her parents. She says: “Suddenly I was allocated a social worker who told me that I’d caused my parents enough anguish and upset and I owed it to them to wipe the slate clean, to give the baby up for adoption and start all over again.” Sue was sworn to secrecy and her mother told everyone that she had gone to Birmingham to do a secretarial course. After giving birth, Sue cared for her daughter for a few weeks before she was taken away.
Sue says: “I wanted to breastfeed but they told me I couldn’t because I would get too attached. So they bound me with bandages to try and stop the milk. She was a real little character and she was smiling. I just had to stay there with her until it was time for her to go. I don’t really know the person I was then but I can still feel her pain. All I wanted to know was that I’d done the right thing. You never heal, it’s always there. That one decision, which was made for me more or less, just ruined my life.” When Sue had a second daughter years later, she was convinced someone would come and take her away. She says: “I thought somebody was going to take her. I used to have these plans in my head, what I would do if somebody came into the house. I knew exactly where I was going to hide her. I thought I didn’t deserve to be this happy and something was going to happen.”
It is estimated that across the UK in the four decades after World War II, more than 200,000 women were forced to give up their babies. Many were sent to institutions run by the Church or state, supported by NHS midwives, doctors and social workers. While other countries, including the Irish, Welsh and Scottish governments as well as the UK Catholic Church, have apologised for these wrongs, the Church of England and the UK government are yet to do the same.
Also speaking in the documentary is Vik, who was adopted at one-week-old from a London hospital. She was brought up by a white family in Somerset and struggled with her identity as a black girl with Jamaican heritage. Vik, whose mother was pressured to give her up, says: “Your history is erased, it was such a complete severance from my culture. And I didn’t know how to deal with black skin and black hair so I had short hair my entire childhood because nobody knew how to manage it.” She adds: “I grew up thinking my mother didn’t want me.” Vik is one of many women battling for an apology, but also for better mental health support because of the devastating impact of forced adoption. She says: “We are overrepresented in mental health circles. We’re overrepresented in prisons, in the homelessness community. Adoptees are four times likely to attempt suicide.”
The ITV investigation also explores shocking evidence that young women were exposed to a harmful drug called Diethylstilbestrol (DES). Testimony from mothers revealed a cruel practice where their breasts were tightly bound and there are also reports of exposure to DES in the homes after giving birth, a drug that prevented miscarriage, dried up milk and has since been linked to a raft of health conditions including cancer, infertility and early menopause. This ‘wonder drug’ was widely withdrawn in the 1970s once the cancer links were discovered, but it’s estimated that thousands of women, not just unmarried mothers, had been prescribed it even with early concerns about dangerous side effects.
Diana was sent to a mother and baby home in Southampton in 1974 when she was just 16 years old and recalls her breast milk drying up after having an injection. She says: “The doctor said, ‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ So I said, yes. He came back and gave me an injection. At no point did he explain what that injection was and the milk dried up. I have tried to find out what that drug was. I’ve approached the hospital, I’ve tried NHS records, but my records are not available before 1997. Why would someone treat a person with so much careless disdain? The only thing I can think of is that I was an unmarried mother, so I was throwaway.”
A spokesperson for The Church of England says: “We are deeply saddened to hear these painful and distressing accounts. We offer our heartfelt sorrow and regret.” In 2016 the head of the catholic church in England and Wales apologised “for the hurt caused by agencies acting in the name of the Catholic Church”. Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, told ITV: “What happened was utterly shocking and terrible, and the impact on women in particular that had that experience, we’re looking very carefully at next steps and we do hope to be able say more soon.”
Diana is now part of the group MAA (Movement for an Adoption Apology) that has been pushing for a formal apology from the UK government for more than a decade. She says: “It feels urgent, we are all getting older. But while I have the energy and the will to do it, I will fight for some measure of justice.”
*Forced Adoption: Britain’s Silent Scandal – Tonight is on ITV1 and ITVX on Thursday 20th February at 8.30pm
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