Group seeks rights for illegally adopted

A GROUP CAMPAIGNING for the rights of those ‘informally’ or ‘illegally’ adopted have held a demonstration calling for their right to be recognised in new adoption legislation due for review at the end of this year.

About 20 supporters of campaign group Adopted Illegally congregated outside the Central Bank in Dublin on Saturday asking the Government to release records to help those illegally adopted to gain access to essential medical and historical information.

Theresa Tinggal and fellow campaigner Maria Dumbell travelled to Dublin from the UK earlier this week to hand a letter to Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald asking her to make available records relating to informal adoptions in the 1950s.

“We want legislation changed in Ireland so we can gain access to case files, medical workers’ files that do exist,” said Ms Tinggal. She learned eight years ago that she had been adopted illegally when she was two days old.

“In view of the Adoption Information and Tracing Bill coming out at the end of the year, and the children’s referendum, we thought it was an appropriate time to come over,” she said.

The group met the HSE this week to put their case. “We were told by the HSE we can’t change anything unless legislation changes and that’s why we’re lobbying,” said Ms Tinggal.

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Calls to release Irish adoption records

Two women who were “illegally” adopted at birth have called on the Minister for Children to release State records which would enable them to find their biological mothers.
Theresa Tinggal and Maria Dumbell travelled to Dublin from the United Kingdom to hand a letter to Frances Fitzgerald asking her to make available records relating to informal adoptions in the 1950s.

Ms Tinggal and Ms Dumbell estimate housands of children were taken from women deemed unfit for parenthood and put up for adoption during the 20th century.

“[I was] not adopted in the normal sense, but informally or illegally,” Ms Tinggal said. “I was handed over to my adoptive parents at two-days-old and then registered as their legal child.”

She discovered she was adopted a decade ago when, aged 48, she was told by a family relative. “Since then I have been searching relentlessly,” she said at a press conference in Dublin. “I still haven’t discovered my birth mother or discovered the circumstances surrounding my birth.”

Ms Dumbell found out she was adopted when she applied for a passport aged 20. When she requested a copy of her birth certificate for the application, she was told by Custom House that no such certificate existed under her name.

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Adopted or abducted?

Most women describe giving birth to a child as a life changing experience – in a word – “challenging”, “joyous”, “miraculous.” But generations of young, unwed women describe their experience of giving birth to a child as a nightmare – and decades later their suffering has yet to end.

From Australia to Spain, Ireland to America, and as recent as 1987, young mothers say they were “coerced”, “manipulated”, and “duped” into handing over their babies for adoption. These women say sometimes their parents forged consent documents, but more often they say these forced adoptions were coordinated by the people their families trusted most...priests, nuns, social workers, nurses or doctors.

Last month, a Dan Rather Reports producer and crew were in Canberra, Australia as Parliament released the findings of an 18-month-long investigation revealing illegal and unethical tactics used to convince young, unmarried mothers to surrender their babies to adoptive homes from the late 1940s to the 1980s. And we interviewed some of the victims -- adoptees and mothers separated at birth.
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