Ireland Opens Decades of Secret Records to Adoptees

Thousands of people are being promised new rights to information, a potentially momentous step in a country where unmarried mothers were pressured for decades to give up their babies.

DUBLIN — For tens of thousands of people who were adopted in Ireland — or gave up children for adoption there, often under heavy pressure — knowledge that for decades was shrouded in secrecy and shame may now be a mouse-click away.

The Irish government introduced an online service this week that for the first time promises adopted people born in Ireland, wherever they now live, the right to see any information the state holds about them — including the names of their birth mothers. It also offers a free tracing service for anyone, including birth mothers, trying to find relatives lost to them through Ireland’s adoption system.

The authorities are permitted up to 30 days to respond to requests, and adoption rights activists are waiting to see how well the service works. But they say it has the potential to be a significant step in reckoning with a painful national legacy of mistreatment of unmarried mothers and their children.

Over decades, ending as recently as 1998, thousands of pregnant and unmarried women and girls in Ireland were confined to church-run “mother and baby homes,” where they were expected and often pressured to give up their babies after birth. An official inquiry published last year acknowledged poor conditions, high death rates and abuses at the institutions.

Most of the children were put up for adoption, sometimes abroad. At least 2,000 Irish-born adoptees were taken to the United States, according to the Adoption Rights Alliance, an activist group.

The Adoption Authority of Ireland said that it received more than 1,000 requests in the first three days of the new service. And it said last month that 16,634 adopted people, birth parents and relatives had registered their wishes about whether they wanted to be contacted, with fewer than 400 saying that they did not.

“In the past, there was shame about the birth, about the adoption,” said Patricia Carey, the authority’s chief executive, “but now people are more willing to see that facing up to it will end the shame, that they really have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Some applicants, however, may find that they have nothing to see. Ireland created a legal framework for adoption in 1953, under which officials say that more than 48,000 people have been adopted. But they estimate that tens of thousands were adopted or fostered informally before then, some illegally registered at birth as the children of their adoptive parents. And others went through adoption societies — usually run by Catholic or Protestant church groups — that may have kept few or no records.

Claire McGettrick, a co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance, said that many Irish adoptees had already tracked down their birth certificates, and with them the names of their mothers (and sometimes fathers). But many of these people, she said, still hoped for information about their births, early life and health care, and the legality or otherwise of their adoptions.

“It’s not just a matter of wanting to know your name,” she said. “Decisions were made by people you’ve never met and you don’t even know their names. They knew things about your life that you don’t. We’ve a right to know the process.”

One of those eager to know was Alan Bigger, 74, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former Notre Dame employee who was born in Belfast but adopted in Dublin. He managed to identify his parents himself, after they had both died, but many circumstances of his birth and adoption remain mysteries.

He said that he began trying to log on to the service at his home in South Bend, Ind., at 7 p.m. on Sunday — midnight in Ireland — but was unable to access it until 4 a.m. his time.

“I’ve been writing to authorities in Northern Ireland and in Dublin for years, but it’s been going around in circles,” he said; his new requests have so far only produced acknowledgments.

“There are little things that they probably do know about me,” he added, “but everything was protected by the churches or the state or private agencies or whatever.”

The coordinator of the U.S. branch of the Adoption Rights Alliance, Mari Steed, said that 300 to 500 Irish-born adoptees were in contact with her group. Many would be applying for their files, she said, as would she.

“People are going to be given a lot of information that they might not understand or properly make sense of,” said Ms. Steed, 62, who lives in Richmond, Va. “We’ve developed a peer support group of people who’ve been looking at these documents for years and know how to interpret them.”

Adopted children — or relatives who survived them — have the right to see any documents relating to them held by the state, through the Adoption Authority or through Tusla, Ireland’s state support organization for children and the family. Both bodies have hired teams to handle requests.

But adoption rights campaigners complain that an imbalance remains between birth mothers and children. Mothers only receive information if a child has registered as willing to be traced. But even if the mother asks not to be contacted, adoptees can obtain the full birth certificate, including the mother’s name, because they have a right to their own personal information.

One woman who gave up a son for adoption and later tracked him down, Anne Hennon, said that some birth mothers felt excluded by the new system because it did not give them the right to know what happened to their children, while others were anxious about being traced.

“Personally, I would never have had any issue about my son tracing me,” she said. “But I do understand that for others, the idea could be quite frightening.”

Ms. McGettrick said that while children could legally approach birth parents who did not want contact, adopted people were usually understanding and discreet, because of their own experiences.

“When people say ‘no’ to contact, these are very complex ‘noes,’” she said, adding that those who gave up babies for adoption had been expected to act like they had never had a child: “We haven’t fully grasped yet what that can do to a person.” Many accepted contact, she said, “once they’ve had a bit of space to get their head around it.”

Ms. Carey of the Adoption Authority said she also thought it likely that some of those who had asked not to be contacted would change their minds, noting that she expected more people to come forward as news of the service spread.

“We have run a campaign through the Irish Embassy and consular network in the U.S. and elsewhere,” she said, adding: “Apart from the adopted children, a lot of birth parents also left Ireland after giving up their children, having had such a bad experience of the country.”

A new site for the archives is also planned, Ms. Carey said, as part of a memorial to those who suffered or died in the mother and baby homes, and in two sets of related institutions: industrial schools, a cross between orphanages and juvenile prisons that took some children from the homes; and so-called Magdalene Laundries, church-run businesses where “difficult” girls and women were confined to work without pay.

And the agencies hold more than just official records, Ms. Carey added.

“Only recently, we received two boxes of baby identity bands from a nurse who worked in a mother and baby home,” she said. “They were on the babies when they came from the hospital, and she put them aside. We also get photographs that were randomly sent in, and other keepsakes and souvenirs. They will go to the people if they can be traced.”