by Mike Milotte
O’Beirne’s request for ‘speedy counter action’ was circulated among senior officials in Dublin, but the unanimous view there was that no action should or could be taken. As one official noted: ‘No action is required, especially as the article is largely correct.’16 Joe Horan replied to O’Beirne by saying they could only demand a rebuttal if they could ‘put matters in truer perspective’. This they were unable to do, Horan pointed out, for the article was ‘largely not incorrect.’ It was better to say nothing at all since to complain would be to attract ‘more adverse publicity’.17 This was an astonishing admission by a very senior Irish State official that the American adoption business was riddled with uncertainty, to put it at its mildest. The only fact that was disputed was the figure of 1,000 children exported to the US in the course of a year. This was far in excess of The Irish Times’ estimate of ‘500 plus’ for the first nine months of 195118 and completely out of line with the official figure of 122 ‘adoption passports’ for the whole year. But Horan seemed to accept that the number of children exported from Ireland exceeded the official tally to a considerable degree.
Joe Horan was the civil servant with the greatest hands- on experience of the American adoption scene. All passport applications passed through his hands. Not surprisingly, he was well aware of the realities of adoption in the American context, and when he said that such a damning article was ‘largely not incorrect’, he knew what he was talking about. Horan had serious reservations about the effectiveness of official controls. The Department, he noted, was only aware of adoption cases where intending adopters actually applied for passports for the children they wanted but, as he pointed out, they did not need a passport to get the child out of Ireland. ‘Once they have the child,’ Horan wrote, ‘there is nothing to stop them getting on the boat at Dun Laoghaire or the plane at Collinstown’ and going first to Britain.19 Once they were out of the Irish jurisdiction, the authorities in Dublin would simply lose track of them. International travel without a valid passport was no easy matter of course, but there was a black market in forged and stolen passports. What was more, American embassies around the world had the authority, under US federal law, to issue entry visas to people without passports, and that included babies and children. The main requirement for getting a visa for a child was simply that the American ‘sponsor’ gave an undertaking that the child would not become a ‘public charge’ after entering the United States. But as the ever-perceptive Joe Horan noted, ‘such an undertaking is worthless since... there is no danger that such a child would become a public charge after entering the United States; it would simply be sold to another couple.’20 Knowing what he did about the loopholes in the official system, it was little wonder Horan felt unable, in honesty, to refute newspaper claims that there was a significant black-market trade going on in Irish babies.
As much as a year before the Jane Russell case, Horan had expressed his deep-seated fears about this ‘veritable trade in orphans’. ‘There is a market for children in the USA,’ Horan wrote. It flourished because ‘demand exceeds supply,’ and as a result, ‘there are in some states shady institutions known as “baby farms” which specialise in collecting children and giving them to adopting parents for a consideration’. There was an obvious concern that Irish children might be procured by these baby farms since among certain Americans, Horan noted, Ireland ‘enjoys quite a reputation... as a place where one can get children for adoption without much difficulty.’21 In further writings, Horan again drew attention to the ‘many private institutions’ in America that ‘do a business in children for adoption,’ and he described Ireland as ‘a happy hunting ground’ for people looking for children – the same phrase used by the German paper, 8 Uhr Blatt.22
Following the outcry surrounding the Jane Russell case, and clearly worried by the amount of media attention it attracted, Horan again recorded his concerns about dispatching children to America. ‘Supposing it happened,’ he wrote, ‘that the child was surrendered to persons who, on arrival in the USA, proceeded to sell it off to the highest bidder, with consequent press publicity etc. It is we who would be held responsible as it is we who would have to answer parliamentary questions, face a press campaign here, and so on.’23 This overwhelming concern with adverse publicity was reflected in another of Horan’s revealing papers. ‘One always has the horrible fear,’ he wrote, ‘that some of the proposed adopters may wish to get their hands on a child for the purpose of making money by selling it to another couple anxious to adopt a child... with for us, all sorts of undesirable prospects such as letters to the newspapers, parliamentary questions and so on. We must be alive to the possibility that the name of this country might one day figure in one of those “exposures” they have from time to time in the USA.’24 The fate of the children seemed of much less concern than the prospect of ‘bad publicity’.
Another issue that Horan drew attention to was the ‘race’ factor. He was a sharp-witted man and could see clearly why Irish babies were so popular for Americans – indeed why they might carry a premium price. ‘Americans,’ he wrote, ‘are colour-conscious and people adopting a child from an American institution could never really be free from the fear that one fine day it might transpire that the child had negro blood, while of course they can be sure that a child got from Ireland would be 100% white.’25
Horan also noted that the practice of sending children to American couples who had never been to Ireland and who had never met the children in question increased the danger of the infants falling into the wrong hands. This, he observed, was a problem peculiar to Catholic children dispatched by the nuns, since the Protestant adoption societies ‘insist on the adopting parents seeing the child before they will even consider surrendering the child to them’. This policy also meant the Protestant agencies in Ireland had an opportunity to interview and assess all prospective adopting couples, something the nuns rarely did as their US adoptions were becoming more and more of the ‘mail order’ variety with everything done by letters and photographs. (Only 24 of the 2,000 American adoptions involved Protestant children.)
What is perhaps most disturbing about Horan’s observations is that they were made long after Catholic Charities had taken on the role of ‘proving’ the suitability of Catholic American adopters. If Horan still feared that children could be sent to people in the States who might sell them, he must have had serious reservations about the American vetting procedures, the procedures that underpinned the entire system and justified the issuing of Irish passports.
Horan’s fears about Irish babies changing hands in America for money could not be dismissed as imaginary. He had evidence of what he called ‘a little racket’ operating in Co. Louth where a woman, known to the authorities, was engaged in sending children to Chicago for adoption. The woman had relatives in Chicago who were involved in selecting the children before their dispatch. This led Horan to conclude that they were running some sort of family business and ‘earning a bit on the side by finding children for childless couples’. Ireland, he said, ‘is a “gift” from their point of view,’ because ‘there is nothing to stop anyone coming into this country and taking away children for adoption’. He related his suspicions to a local Garda Chief Superintendent, with a request that the police investigate the family concerned. ‘We know there really is a market for children in the USA,’ he said.26
Unfortunately the results of the police chief’s inquiry are not available, but whatever effect his investigation had on the family ‘racket’, it failed to put an end to the traffic in Irish babies in Chicago. In the summer of 1952, for instance, a number of Irish priests travelled to Chicago and made ‘private arrangements’ for the placement of children there. The children in question were placed without any prior investigation into the background of the people to whom they were given – a fact that led the Rev Bernard Brogan, Associate Director of Catholic Charities in Chicago, to declare himself ‘fearful of the ultimate outcome of these placements,’ since ‘visiting priests are not
in any position to judge the acceptability of an adoptive home’.27 And it wasn’t just Chicago. During a visit to Ireland at the end of 1951, a senior social worker from Catholic Charities told an official in the Department of External Affairs that she had investigated cases in the Cleveland area of Ohio where Irish children had been sent to unsuitable and uninspected homes.28 And their unsuitability had nothing to do with the religious pedigree of the adopters.
What these cases make clear is that there was a gaping loophole in the official monitoring system as well as in McQuaid’s controls. The Department of External Affairs had announced in early 1951 that passports would only be issued to children after approval of the adoptive parents by Catholic Charities. Yet here were cases over a year later – the priests taking children to Chicago – where a number of children had obtained passports to leave Ireland although the Americans who were adopting them had not been vetted by anyone.
The Department of External Affairs expressed shock at Father Brogan’s revelations from Chicago and asked for a list of the children’s names so a check could be made to see how they managed to get passports in breach of the Department’s own regulations. If Brogan replied, his response is not on file. Nor is there any evidence on file to suggest the Department carried out an investigation of its own. The same has to be said about the revelations from Cleveland. The matter was noted on file, but no attempt seems to have been made to find out who the children were or what became of them – an appalling indictment of official hypocrisy. While the people involved in promoting and processing the export of Irish children to the United States may once have assumed that those they dispatched were going to a better life, by 1952 they had abundant evidence that it was a very hit-and-miss affair. No one knew – or seemed to want to find out – how many vulnerable Irish children had been sold on the thriving American black market, possibly into a life of exploitation, physical and/or sexual abuse, or worse – their fates unrecorded and, sadly, unknowable.
One case, however, can be reported in some detail since the child at its centre survived and resurfaced to tell her story. Mary Theresa Monaghan was born on 7 October 1950 to an unmarried mother at the Sacred Heart convent in Castlepollard. Her mother, in line with standard practice and with no meaningful alternative available to her, surrendered Mary Theresa to Sister Rosamonde McCarthy, the head nun at Castlepollard, and on 13 September 1952. Sister Rosamonde, following Archbishop McQuaid’s requirements to the letter, surrendered the infant to her would-be American adopters, well-to-do Catholics, William and Marguerite O’Brien of Huntington Park, California who already had an adopted son, Patrick. On 22 September 1952, an Irish passport was issued under the authority of the Minister for External Affairs, Frank Aitken, so Mary Theresa could be dispatched to her new life in the United States. Mary Theresa’s US entry visa shows she arrived in California on 2 October 1952, and within two years her legal adoption by the O’Briens was completed. On paper, at least, everything looked normal and above board. The adoption had proceeded in line with all the legal and administrative rules set down by the Irish State and Catholic Church to supposedly protect children and preserve their faith. But Mary Theresa’s story shows how totally inadequate those rules and regulations were, for although she wasn’t sold on the black market, she suffered terribly in her new home.
Four and a half decades after her arrival in America, Mary Theresa imagined herself back in 1952 and began writing about how she had experienced her new life from the outset. ‘Today I am two years old,’ she wrote. ‘I hide. I fear. I cry. I cannot eat. I sense consternation. I sense anger. I sense that I am no longer safe. Where is this place of danger? I cry. I hide. Why can I not find safety or protection? I crawl into every dark place that I fit. I must find a place to be away from the noise and the screams of ridicule. What have I done? Why is everyone so angry?’29
Bill O’Brien, her adoptive father, was a violent and dangerous man who beat his wife and sexually abused Mary Theresa throughout her childhood and into her late teens when she finally escaped the family home to attend university.30 At an early age she had discovered that her adopted brother, Patrick, was actually Bill O’Brien’s natural son, one of twins born to a woman with whom he had had an extramarital affair. Mrs O’Brien, who was unable to have children of her own, had gone along with the subterfuge in the hope that it would make Mr O’Brien a less violent and abusive partner. It didn’t. He would regularly taunt
Mary Theresa, ‘Your real parents didn’t want you’, which increased her sense of abandonment and isolation and robbed her of whatever self-esteem remained.
When Mr O’Brien died in 1977, Mary Theresa obtained a file of her adoption papers from her adoptive mother. They gave the first clues as to how her life had taken such a dreadful course. Among the documents was a letter to Sister Rosemonde McCarthy at the Sacred Heart convent, Castlepollard, from the Right Reverend Monsignor Raymond J. O’Flaherty of the Californian Catholic Welfare Bureau, the body charged with conducting a Home Study and verifying the suitability of Mr and Mrs O’Brien as adoptive parents. The letter was dated 8 September, 1952, five days before Sister Rosemonde signed legal documents surrendering Mary Theresa to the O’Briens. ‘You realise, of course’, O’Flaherty wrote, ‘that our Home Study cannot be considered complete since Mr O’Brien could not be interviewed.’ They couldn’t interview him because he had already travelled to Ireland to collect Mary Theresa. Pressures of time took precedence over producing a comprehensive report. ‘Our Home Study is not as complete as it would have been were it not for the time element,’ O’Flaherty acknowledged. ‘It is our understanding that Mr O’Brien will soon leave Ireland to return to his employment and must complete plans for the little girl to accompany him to California.’ O’Brien, it seemed, was dictating the terms.
‘However’, O’Flaherty added rather pointedly, ‘you have had the benefit of interviews with Mr O’Brien and so have made an evaluation and a decision, feeling secure that Mary Teresa (sic) would be given a good home.’ It was evident that Bill O’Brien had been to Castlepollard to see the nuns and had been interviewed in person by Sister Rosemonde, who clearly had no qualms about releasing the infant Mary Theresa to him. With this disclaimer, O’Flaherty proceeded to recommend the adoption based on the ‘excellent reference’ provided by the O’Briens’ priest, Father Thomas Morris, who had known the couple for 14 years, together with a letter from Bill O’Brien’s work associates at the Studebaker Corporation, and another from the couple’s GP.
O’Flaherty wrote of the ‘seemingly good relationship’ between Mrs O’Brien and her adopted son Patrick, and the ‘fine relationship’ that existed between Mr and Mrs O’Brien, and he referred to their ‘apparently genuine’ wish to adopt a second child. O’Flaherty’s otherwise sparse and somewhat qualified letter ended with a thoroughly detailed account of the O’Briens’ finances: Mr O’Brien’s salary was $350 a month (equivalent to €12,000 a month today), and they had deposits of $750 in two banks, a further $875 in US Savings Bonds, $1,540 in the Credit Union, $4,000 worth of shares in retail giant Sears and Roebuck, and real estate in San Gabriel, near Los Angeles. They owned their own home and furnishings as well as two cars, and they had no debt. The letter of recommendation that O’Flaherty enclosed from the O’Briens’ doctor, Bernard Corren, stated: ‘From our observations of both Mr and Mrs O’Brien over a period of time, we feel that they have the necessary qualities for parenthood.’ They weren’t ‘shirking natural parenthood’ either: Mrs O’Brien had had a hysterectomy a year previously. The other note O’Flaherty enclosed was from Doug Gittins, Personnel Director of the Studebaker Corporation where Mr O’Brien worked. It wasn’t a recommendation of any sort and was actually addressed to Mr O’Brien. All it said was, ‘we are all very anxious to see the little colleen which we trust you will be able to bring back to the States with you.’
This, it seems, was the sum total of what it took for an abusive (but devout) Catholic to obtain an Irish child for adoption in 1952: a seriousl
y incomplete Home Study report, a sugary note from an employer, a misjudged letter from a doctor, an unknowing priest’s recommendation, the nod from a nun sorely lacking in professional qualifications, and a very fat bank balance.
Reflecting on her years of brutal sexual abuse Mary Theresa said, ‘Perhaps if a pre-adoption interview with Mr O’Brien had taken place by a trained person I would not have been placed in the home of a very violent paedophile.’ Describing her life with the O’Briens simply as ‘painful’, Mary Theresa pondered, ‘I can’t help but wonder who I might be now if there hadn’t been so much abuse to overcome.’ Therapy, and good friends, helped. So too did her search for her natural mother, although it took twenty years to complete. In the course of her search she had written to Father P.J. Reagan, parish priest at Castlepollard, asking for her baptismal certificate. In his reply, and in blithe ignorance of the reality of Mary Theresa’s life as an adopted person, Father Reagan, who was himself closely enmeshed in the American adoption business, asked about the only subject that really mattered: ‘I do hope your Irish Catholic Faith continues to mean a lot for you?’ But whatever Faith there had been, it had long since evaporated.
While Tommy Kavanagh’s life with Jane Russell in Beverly Hills certainly did not mirror in any way that of Mary Theresa, even his story was not, in the end, a happy one. ‘My parents got divorced in 1965, when I was 15’, he said in a revealing 1998 interview.31 ‘That was when things got pretty stressed for me. When it’s your Mum and Dad in the papers every day, it’s tough.’ After the divorce, Tommy wanted to know more about his natural parents, so Jane Russell brought him back to London to meet them. The reunion was conducted in the full glare of the media. ‘I was told, “The cameras are rolling, now you walk in and sit over on the couch and you meet your real mum.” The whole thing was staged. It was really confusing. I wasn’t sure if I should feel guilty because they lived so humbly.’ Tommy went on to say that the ‘confusion’ he faced in his life ‘became too much’ for him. He left home, ‘became a tearaway’, used drugs, fathered a child out of wedlock, and sorely disappointed Jane Russell by failing to go to college. Approaching the age of 50, he said he had got himself together again after an unsuccessful marriage that ended in divorce. ‘I’m just a working guy struggling to pay the bills,’ he said. ‘I make leather belts for a living and at weekends play in a band called Russell in honour of my mother.’ Meanwhile, his brother Michael revealed that when Tommy wrote to him from his adopted home, ‘it was obvious from the letters that he wasn’t always happy.... Being adopted had its effect on Tommy. If Tommy had stayed with us, he wouldn’t have had a bad life. Dad brought us up, worked hard and gave us everything. I would never change places with Tommy, never.’32
