MY ENQUIRY TO THE MAA Latest Update - Sent THIS EVENING
Hi There..
I am pleased that your campaign has been moving forward and I congratulate you and your team for your diligence, purpose and resilience on this matter.
However I have written to you before on mine and others of my generation, who though not forced adopted, were to all intents and purposes just given away. This is an even more dark side to the whole M&B homes system that is not even being looked at here in the UK.. as it is not even recorded in the same way a baby was adopted.. or even of those mothers and babies that may have died in childbirth in M&B homes.. eg. Tuam in Ireland.
I did at the age of 13yo end up in council care as I was taken away from the foster home I had been dumped in. Whatever you think, don’t take foster home as what they are now in this more enlightened age, I had a brutal Dickensian upbringing, I was just 6 weeks old when I was placed into the “so called foster Home” and it took social services 13 years to knock on the door and ask who is he, where did you get him from, who are his mother and father... They never got any answers BTW.. I was beaten every day and used as a slave in my mind to do what ever my so called “foster mother” tasked me with.
I sort of take on board your campaign is around adoptions, but now that you have traction I think this whole sorry affair of children, sorry, innocent babies just being used as some sort of commodity needs to be widened further, to include all those of us that are not on the radar of those that were adopted and therefore are not documented. I understand each single case is unique as to who, what, were, when and why.... but my concern is “How” did it happen that there is another layer of us un-adopted children that is not even being discussed?
I have done my own research but come up against brick walls as to my own history, once being told there was no record of my existence.. and the sad truth is that is probably true to some extent, but I know from my own efforts my mother was Irish, Catholic to boot, and that her/ my family came from Galway, but not much more really.. other than they are now dead and never knew me.
As I said, I wrote to you some years ago, and I support what you are doing, but you never took on my concerns then, so I doubt you will now, but I feel this enquiry needs to be widened to take on all those un-adopted babies who ended up, well where did they end up??, they are the lost children of which I am one of many.
My only wish now as an old man with a grown up son and a very new baby granddaughter, is to know who we really are.... I know my life story so far has affected all my relationships with those I should love and care for, which is why I am probably single and have lived alone most of my life, even now I am alone.
I do believe though some records however scant must exist somewhere, so I want those records to be made accessible to all those like myself who have been forgotten by the authorities and your campaign, to then have access and support to them , in finding out our back story.. The Catholic Church is one place to look, they have accurate records, including the cover ups they have orchestrated over millennium.
Anyway, as I sit here and write this short note to you, because that is what it is really a “short note”, as I have more to say but don’t want to hijack your project.
If you would like to chat more then let me know...
