Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business Read online

  Praise for Banished Babies

  ‘A brilliant exposé of the shabby history of sectarian cruelty to unmarried women who became pregnant in Ireland in the 1950s’

  Susan McKay, Sunday Tribune

  ‘This book would make your blood boil... one of the finest pieces of journalism this reader has come across for many a day. The author, Mike Milotte, has done his profession proud.’

  Padraig O’Morain, The Irish Times

  ‘A salutary story, too long untold, and another nail in the coffin of Dev’s mythical mystical Ireland.’

  The Big Issue

  ‘An astonishing story, meticulously told – and an excellent piece of journalism.’

  An Phoblacht

  This book is dedicated to the memory of my friend and colleague, Mary Raftery who did so much to expose clerical crimes against defenceless children, and to Rachel, Saoirse, Caoimhe and Mallaidh.

  Banished Babies

  Banished Babies

  The secret history of

  Ireland’s baby export business

  Updated and Expanded Edition

  Mike Milotte

  BANISHED BABIES

  This edition published 2012 by

  by New Island

  2 Brookside

  Dundrum Road

  Dublin 14

  www.newisland.ie

  First published in 1997 by New Island

  Copyright © Mike Milotte, 2012

  The author has asserted his moral rights.

  PRINT ISBN 978-1-8484-0133-4

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-84840-372-7

  MOBI ISBN 978-1-84840-373-4

  All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

  British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  New Island received financial assistance from

  The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Note on the Updated and Expanded Edition

  Part 1: Church and State

  Prologue: A Surprise for the Wife

  1. A Happy Hunting Ground

  2. McQuaid’s Rules, OK?

  3. Me Tommy, You Jane

  4. A Hard Act to Follow

  5. A Major Inquisition

  6. From Cock-Up...

  7. ... To Cover-Up

  8. A Very Grave Offence

  9. Troublesome Priest

  Part 2: Mother and Child

  Prologue: The Adoption Triangle

  10. Jim and Dorothy: No Price too High

  11. Pat: Against My Will

  12. Mary, Michael and Kevin: Legitimate Error?

  13. Maureen: Seek and Ye Shall Find (But Don’t Hold Your Breath)

  14. Deny Till They Die

  Tables

  Note on Sources

  Note on Monetary Conversions

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgements

  Most of the personal stories featured in the first edition of Banished Babies were drawn from interviews originally conducted by the author for an RTÉ Prime Time documentary, The Secret Baby Trail. Thanks to RTÉ, I was able to reuse that material in full for this book, although RTÉ bears no responsibility for its contents. New stories based on further interviews and correspondence have been added to this second edition. An enormous debt of gratitude is due to all who were willing to share with me those aspects of their private lives that have made this book possible.

  As the bulk of the historical material in this book comes from State papers, with the addition of further information from the archives of the late Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, it has remained unchanged from the first edition. I am grateful to Caitriona Crowe of the National Archive for making the official papers so accessible, and to David Sheehy for providing copies of the McQuaid papers.

  For the first edition I utilised information about the racial and commercial nature of adoption in America that was kindly provided by Professor Patricia Williams of Columbia University. For the second edition I have had the benefit of further documentary material provided by Marie

  Hechter in New York. In addition, I have drawn freely on articles by Conall Ó Fátharta in the Irish Examiner in the summer of 2011 which deal authoritatively with the most recent developments in the wider area of adoption.Others who deserve thanks for their invaluable practical help in the production of this new edition include: Ita Collins, Jim Jackman, Susan Lohan, Claire McGetterick, Grainne Mason, and Mari Steed. And I remain grateful to Anne, Enda, Kevin, Fran, Maggie, Mary, Nora and Therese who taught me much about the complexities of adoption.

  Finally, thanks to Edwin Higel and Conor Graham at New Island Books for the enthusiasm they have shown for this expanded and updated second edition.

  Note on the Updated and Expanded Edition

  When this book was first published in 1997, it revealed – for the first time – the extent to which Church and State had stood side by side in organising the banishment of thousands of babies and toddlers – the country’s most vulnerable citizens – from the land of their birth. But it also proved that, far from imagining themselves to be sending these hapless children to a land of milk and honey in the United States, those responsible – clerical and lay – had abundant evidence that many of the children they dispatched across the Atlantic were sent to people whose suitability as adoptive parents had not been sufficiently investigated, if investigated at all, or who had even been rejected previously as adoptive parents by America’s own child welfare authorities. The book also revealed that successive Irish governments were fully aware of a substantial and lucrative – but entirely illegal – black market in Irish babies, running in parallel with the ‘official’ American export programme. Yet, throughout the 1950s, when the great bulk of Ireland’s baby exports took place, the official response was not to seek out and rescue the children who had been put at risk, but was rather to do nothing – other than conceal the truth and hope it never entered the public domain. Child welfare mattered less than ensuring there was no bad publicity.

  Although the first edition of Banished Babies enjoyed a wide readership, this aspect of the story failed to win general acknowledgement or arouse widespread concern. Outrage over the Church’s abuse of children in other areas of Irish life did not stretch to adoption practices. Adoption was seen as something separate, not part of the continuum of abuse and domination. I suspect that the reason for that has much to do with public perceptions of adoption in general. The prevailing attitude among the public at large was – and probably still is – that adoption is primarily an act of kindness by selfless individuals towards unfortunate children. While there can be no doubt that this is often the case, for the greater part adoption is simply the means by which people who are unable to produce their own children legally acquire those produced by others. That of course does not preclude the provision of a loving and caring home for the children involved per se, but it is, nevertheless, a very different starting point. When the needs of those who want children outweigh the needs of the children themselves, that is when the whole process is much more likely to turn out badly. Adoption must always raise concerns about the circumstances in which the natural parents gave their children up for adoption, especially when – which is usually the case – the adopters command
greater resources and wield more authority than those whose children they are acquiring. Issues such as informed consent and financial duress are constantly present. And whatever the outcome of individual adoptions, adopted children and their natural mothers – each victims of a traumatic loss – are expected by the rest of society to display gratitude to their supposed benefactors for the rest of their lives.

  Given the somewhat naïve view of adoption as intrinsically child-centred, and therefore, by definition, ‘good’, the attitude towards the sending of thousands of children to America for adoption remained one of broad acceptance based on the notion that it must have all been done in the best interests of the children involved. Who, after all, could dispute that life with well-heeled American adopters was preferable to life in an Irish religious-run institution?

  Superficially this might appear to be a convincing argument. But when its surface is scratched, when its sentimentality is pared away and when its ‘taken for granted’ view of the world is challenged – as it is by this book – a different reality emerges. Yet despite the revelations in this book, there were no calls for an investigation into the fate of the children concerned, no demands that those responsible in the great institutions of Church and State be held to account for their blatant negligence. The State has never acknowledged that, in its desire to accommodate the Catholic Church, it put the welfare of countless children in jeopardy, and while it may have acknowledged to some extent the suffering of their young and often frightened mothers, it has never admitted its own share of responsibility for the damage done. Nor has the Catholic Church ever recognised that its involvement in the whole affair was the cause of widespread pain and suffering.

  By comparison, the Catholic Church in Australia issued an apology in July 2011 for its role in affecting what has been termed ‘forced adoptions’ in that country involving thousands of children from church-run homes. Reports quoting the Australian mothers of these children will be immediately recognisable to many of the Irish mothers whose experiences are recounted in this book: ‘The women said they were alone and frightened and were not told about their rights to revoke adoption consent. They said they were pressured to sign adoption papers before consent could legally be obtained. In some cases documents are said to have been forged.’

  If that is what amounts to forced adoption, then Ireland has had more than its fair share of this shameful practice. But Ireland isn’t Australia, and no apologies are even hinted at here. Indeed, the very existence of forced adoption in Ireland – let alone its prevalence – isn’t yet acknowledged in official discourse.

  Yet in the years since this book first appeared, the public’s attitude to the Catholic Church and its domination of Irish life has shifted inexorably. We now know, from countless inquiries and investigations, that the abuse of children by Catholic nuns, priests, and Christian Brothers was endemic, even systematic in Ireland, and that the dominant ethos within the Church was to place the avoidance of scandal above the welfare of children. The Irish State has sought to deny any share of responsibility for the direct physical and sexual abuse of children in the care of the religious. But, as the pages that follow make abundantly clear, it cannot escape responsibility for the fate of the children it helped send out of the country for adoption. And in the case of these adoptions too, the avoidance of scandal, at whatever cost, was uppermost in the minds of State authorities.

  Perhaps by retelling this story in these changed times its impact will be greater and the taboo on naming adoption as part of the spectrum of Church-State abuse will be broken. In the interest of all those who suffered – the children and their natural mothers – it is certainly to be hoped so.

  PART I

  Church and State

  Prologue

  A Surprise for the Wife

  It was the 12th of July 1949 when wealthy American businessman Rollie William McDowell flew into Ireland with his personal attorney Michael Ebeling. Their arrival attracted no particular attention, but the same could not be said of their departure some two weeks later.

  Forty-year-old McDowell, whose ancestors were Irish, had made his money as a property dealer in St Louis, Missouri, but he wasn’t in Ireland in pursuit of real estate. He had come in pursuit of a child. More specifically, he and his attorney had come to investigate the possibility of obtaining a child from an Irish orphanage. If the signs were hopeful McDowell intended sending for his wife, Thelma, who was waiting to hear from him back in St Louis, so they could search together for a suitable infant. The McDowells were realistic. They expected to be in Ireland for quite a while, knowing that adoption, especially inter-country adoption, was likely to be a long, slow process. Yet just two weeks after his arrival in the country, Rollie McDowell returned home, disembarking at New York’s La Guardia airport from the Trans World Airlines flight from Ireland. ‘Never far from his sight,’ according to the New York Times, ‘were Patricia Frances, four months old, and Michael James, four years old, recently of the Braemar House Orphanage in Cork.’

  ‘I found the children at the first orphanage we went to and they were the first children I saw,’ a proud and beaming McDowell told a reporter at the airport. ‘I liked the girl right away. Then Michael James came over and put his arms around me and said, “I like you,” and he kissed me. He was so very affectionate,’ McDowell went on, ‘I liked him right away. I suppose you can say he adopted me.’ Within days of his first encounter with the children McDowell had taken custody of them. Now, back at La Guardia airport, Rollie McDowell had just enough time to phone Thelma and ask her to meet him when his connecting flight arrived at St Louis at 4pm. He didn’t mention the fact that he had two children in tow. ‘How nice it is to surprise your wife occasionally,’ remarked the New York Times, without a hint of irony.1

  The remarkable story of Rollie McDowell’s effortless acquisition and removal of two Irish children was syndicated to newspapers across America, complete with beguiling photographs of the two infants. Fortunately, perhaps, Michael’s bright green trousers and cap weren’t revealed by the black and white newsprint. But for the American media this was an unashamedly happy story, almost a fairytale come true: two little Irish waifs rescued from a life of poverty and misery by a wealthy benefactor who would give them a chance in life for which anyone in their position would be eternally grateful.

  In acquiring two children for immediate shipment to the United States, Mr McDowell had broken no laws. Yet the fact that the whole business had been conducted without his wife’s involvement – let alone knowledge – indicated that no one with responsibility for the children’s welfare had bothered to investigate the would-be adoptive parents and their motives, nor the circumstances in which the children would live and be reared in the States. The Braemar Orphanage may have had day-to-day responsibility for the two children, but as citizens of the new Irish Republic, declared just a few months earlier, ultimate liability for their well-being rested squarely with the State as represented by the Government of the day. But the Government, as we shall see, was reluctant to curtail a babies-for-export affair that was primarily the preserve of the Catholic Church.

  Rollie McDowell, of course, was just one of many. Close on his heels came US naval airman Eugene Perry. In November 1949 Perry returned from a European posting to his home in California accompanied by two Irish infants, three-year-old James Kearney and two-year-old Mary Dillon, whom he had obtained from the mother-and-baby home run by the Sacred Heart nuns at Castlepollard in County Westmeath. Like many American armed forces personnel who were acquiring babies from Ireland at this time, Perry had made contact with the nuns through a Catholic military chaplain with Irish connections. Like Rollie McDowell, Perry had made the journey to and from Ireland unaccompanied by his wife. Perry’s story, too, received much publicity. One newspaper described the children as ‘Irish war orphans’.2 Another spoke of them as ‘tousled redheads with eyes big as dollars’.3 A third waxed lyrical about the ‘beautiful but homeless orphans’ who departed from ‘
the little convent of Sacred Heart… through the streets in a donkey cart’.4 The Castlepollard home was, in fact, an ugly purpose-built institution of 1930s vintage, but that wasn’t going to interfere with a colourful story. And the language got even more saccharine. It was, said one paper, as if ‘... a faery crept through the darkened streets of Castlepollard and through the convent gates and into the convent itself and waved a magic wand and whispered: you shall fly through the air and over an ocean and across a great new land’. From then on it was a story of ‘great winged planes’ and ‘endless Irish laughter’.5

  Rollie McDowell and Eugene Perry made the headlines – but only in America. Their exploits were barely mentioned in Ireland where the steadily growing practice of sending children abroad for adoption was not a matter of any significant public debate or comment. Yet it was a practice that had been going on for a number of years before McDowell’s well-publicised coup of 1949, and it was set to continue, without interruption, until the 1970s, by which time thousands of babies, virtually every one of them born to an unmarried mother, had been exported. When this baby trafficking finally faded out its passing was as unremarked as its beginning, and another twenty-five years were to elapse before the story of Ireland’s banished babies finally hit the headlines of the Irish newspapers.

  When it did – in 1996 – the facts were initially unclear and tangled, while those who knew the truth kept silent. It was a long time before the realisation dawned that the practice of sending ‘illegitimate’ children to America for adoption had been a highly organised affair rather than a series of random acts by unconnected individuals.

  1. A Happy Hunting Ground