Woman who spent 16 years trying to trace son ‘elated’ by adoption move

New legislation guarantees adopted people the right to obtain their birth certificates

Joan McDermott, who grew up in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, fought for 16 years to track down her firstborn son, to whom she had given birth at the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork when she was just 17.

The two finally met in 2015 when he was 47 years old.

“I will never forget it. Within an hour of meeting him he said: ‘How old am I really?’” McDermott, who now lives in Midleton, told The Irish Times.

Expressing “elation” at the legislation to guarantee adopted people the right to their birth certificates, she said her son had told her that he had spent a decade unsuccessfully trying to track her down.

He had not known how old he was because he had been given a different birth date to the one he eventually found in the redacted information he secured from Tusla, the State’s child and family agency.

“I was able to clarify his correct date of birth and the year. This was a deliberate ploy that was conducted in these homes so that you wouldn’t ever trace each other. Until my son and I connected he couldn’t apply for a passport,” said McDermott.

‘State secret’

“Born in the jurisdiction and no right to a passport because the legislation was such that you had no right to access your birth certificate,” said the former nurse and social worker, adding that getting information on her son was like trying to crack a “State secret”.

“I had to navigate my way through a very bureaucratic system. I hold responsible the system of this State for having my son and I estranged from each other unnecessarily. If this new legislation had been in situ that would not have happened,” she went on.

The Bessborough nuns had humiliated her regularly by forcing her to cut grass with a pair of scissors, she said. “It was our punishment for the ‘sin’ we had committed. It was about humiliation. I live with it every day of the week.

“I try to be strong but it leaves a horrendous mark. In every aspect of the care for us women our human rights were breached,” she said, adding that she and her son now have a very profound friendship. “I love him to bits and he loves me.”

Contacted

Understanding the feelings of women who do not want to be contacted by their children, she said: “It is hoped people will be respectful of that. I know women who went on to marry and never told their husbands or their subsequent children of what had occurred.”

Meanwhile, a woman who only wants to be identified as “a mother from a mother and baby home” said that she has been contacted by many individuals who are now fearful that they will be traced by children they gave birth to decades ago.

“I have deep concerns because there are women in this country for whom the conception was through rape, incest or through grooming. There are women I know who have never informed their husbands and families that they have [previously] given birth.

“I took several calls from women. I told them the worst-case scenario is that if they are contacted, [then] a clinical psychologist can come up with a plan with them to address the matter. There will be ramifications from this. There will be pain from this.”

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