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

by Mike Milotte

  It has to be emphasised, of course, that cases of extreme violence and murder involving adopted people, while seemingly more frequent on a pro rata basis than among non-adopted people, are still extremely rare, and that the vast majority of adopted people have adjusted to the conditions in which they have found themselves, or at least sufficiently so for them to function without serious outward signs of being troubled by their conflicted status.

  The sort of psychological research that is available nowadays was unavailable in the days when the nuns were sending children like Kieran McNulty/Kevin Murtaugh to the United States for adoption, and it seemed that no amount of regulations from Church or State could prevent such human tragedies. Nor, for that matter, could they curtail the activities of the even less scrupulous baby traffickers who continued to ply their lucrative trade in the shadows.

  8. A Very Grave Offence

  On the 19th of January 1965, Mary Keating, midwife and proprietress of St Rita’s private nursing home in south Dublin, was convicted in the Dublin District Court for what was described at her trial as a ‘very grave’ offence. Over 30 years after the event, Dr Karl Mullen, the gynaecologist and celebrated hero of 1950s Irish rugby, recalled that Mrs Keating had been prosecuted for ‘selling babies to America’. It was an erroneous, but highly revealing, recollection from someone who was personally close to Mrs Keating and who had attended her trial as a potential character witness. Someone else in court that day was future TD, Senator and Lord Mayor of Dublin, Joe Doyle, who for the past ten years had been Sacristan at Donny- book Catholic Church where Mrs Keating had her falsely registered babies baptised.1 Mrs Keating had, in fact, been prosecuted for forging the official birth register and uttering forged birth certificates with intent to deceive. Behind the seemingly technical charges, however, lay a much bigger story, for while Mrs Keating may not have been charged with selling babies to America, as Karl Mullen thought, it was certainly suspected that that was precisely what she was up to.

  Mrs Keating’s name and that of St Rita’s were, of course, well known to the authorities. Back in the mid 1950s they had figured prominently in a Special Branch investigation into a Babies-for-export racket involving American airmen stationed in Britain. On that occasion the authorities had been more interested in keeping the whole business under wraps than in bringing the culprits to justice. On the second time around Mrs Keating was not so lucky, although the full story still never came out.

  In 1959, a year after all the regulations regarding foreign adoptions had been standardised and tightened up, an American couple, Mr and Mrs Wedderburn, travelled to Dublin looking for a child to take back with them to the United States.2 They were introduced to Mrs Keating as someone who might be able to help. She promised to find them a little girl, as they had requested, and they went home with their hopes raised. But they were in for a long wait. After their return home to the States, the Wedderburns maintained a regular correspondence with Mrs Keating as weeks turned to months, and months to years. It was one indication of how difficult it must have been for the couple to adopt a child in America that they were prepared to wait so long to get one from Ireland. But finally there was good news from Dublin. Halfway through 1962 the Wedderburns received word from Mrs Keating that a baby girl had become available. The baby was born at St Rita’s on 16 June. Her mother was unmarried, but of good background, and was prepared to ‘disappear’ from the official records by not having the birth registered in her own name.

  A month after the birth, on 16 July 1962, Mrs Keating forged the official register of births and procured a birth certificate for the baby in the name of ‘Jane Wedderburn’. The child was then baptised in this name at Donnybrook Catholic Church. Matters appeared to be proceeding as planned; all that was required now was for the Wedderburns to come and collect ‘their’ daughter. But there was to be a last minute hitch: suddenly and quite unexpectedly the Wedderburns announced they were unable to travel to Dublin. Instead the baby was to be entrusted to a sister-in- law of Mrs Wedderburn’s – a Mrs Woulfe – who would come instead. This complicated matters greatly, for it meant that the 16 July birth certificate in the name of Jane Wedderburn was now useless. Another one was needed in the name of Woulfe if it was to match Mrs Woulfe’s passport. Again Mrs Keating obliged by forging another entry in the register of births and obtaining a second birth certificate on 25 July, this time in the name of ‘Jane Woulfe’. Mrs Woulfe arrived in Dublin soon after, and she and baby ‘Jane Woulfe’ then travelled back to America where the baby was handed over to the Wedderburns.

  The arrival of baby Jane in the States should have been the end of the affair, but it was, in fact, just the beginning. The Wedderburns were proud of their new baby girl, but a neighbour, knowing something of their personal history, became suspicious and notified the authorities of the new and unexplained arrival. Investigations in the States quickly established an Irish connection and the Department of External Affairs in Dublin was advised. When news of the Wedderburn baby reached the Department, a full scale Garda investigation was set in train. Its focus, however, wasn’t just this one baby. It wasn’t even Mrs Keating. The authorities had their sights on a man whom they believed to be behind a major baby-selling racket that had gone on undetected for a number of years, and that had involved the illegal dispatch of many babies to America. The man, who had a public profile, was never charged with any offence, although it was always suspected that it was he, and not Mrs Keating, who was the principal beneficiary of the scam.3

  Several senior police officers were involved in the investigation, but when the file was eventually sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, he decided to prosecute only Mrs Keating for her role in forging the official birth register. Given the scope of the operation centred on St Rita’s, and the potential profits resulting from over a decade and a half of facilitating illegal adoptions, this was indeed a paltry charge.

  When her trial took place before Justice Farrell in the Dublin District Court in January 1965, the prosecution described the offences as ‘very grave’ but stressed that Mrs Keating was ‘a respectable woman’ who ‘derived no more benefit from the birth and the transaction than the normal accouchement fees’.4 The prosecution offered no evidence of financial dealings, and there wasn’t a hint in court of the bigger picture or of the man who was behind the racket. Had there been evidence of ‘bribery and corruption,’ Judge Farrell remarked, he would have sent Mrs Keating to jail. But if that had happened, she might have been much less willing to take all the blame herself. As it was, Mrs Keating pleaded guilty and the proceedings ended quickly. Had she denied the charge, and had the State been required to prove her guilt, much more would have come out. Despite the acknowledged gravity of the offence, she was put on probation and the matter ended there. It was a small triumph for Mrs Keating’s defence counsel, Declan Costello, then a leading Fine Gael TD, a future Attorney General and President of the High Court. She was clearly well connected.

  When Justice Farrell asked if Mrs Keating’s nursing home licence was in danger, the Garda officer who had led the investigation, Inspector Tony McMahon, said he had no instructions to investigate that aspect of the case. But someone else in court that day had taken it upon himself to ensure that Mrs Keating did not lose her licence. A priest, who knew her well, had come to the court prepared to appear as a character witness for Mrs Keating, alongside Karl Mullen and Joe Doyle. In the event, none of them were called, but the priest was to go to even greater lengths to help ensure she remained in business.

  The priest decided to intervene at the highest level possible to plead on Mrs Keating’s behalf: with the Taoiseach himself, Sean Lemass. This led to an interesting encounter, not with Lemass, whom he didn’t get to meet, but with a future Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, the then Minister for Agriculture, Charles Haughey, who happened to pass by while the priest was waiting in the hope of seeing Lemass. The priest and the minister got talking and when Haughey learned of the reason for the priest’s visit he laughed an
d told him, ‘sure half the children born at St Rita’s were fathered by members of the Dáil’.5 An exaggeration, without a doubt, but if there was any truth in it at all, it might explain why the identities of so many of Mrs Keating’s ‘girls’ were obliterated through the issuing of false birth certificates, why she was so keen to dispatch their children to America, and why she was so willing to plead guilty to a very grave offence, protecting the man who was masterminding the whole business in the process. Mrs Keating kept her licence and remained profitably in business until she retired more than a decade later, the Wedderburns got to keep their baby, and ‘Mr Big’ lived a long, respectable, and prosperous life.

  Mrs Keating’s was the first and last prosecution arising out of the entire American adoption saga, although it is quite clear that Mrs Keating was far from the only person who broke the law. Some of the goings-on at the Sacred Heart Convent and adoption society at Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary also came to the attention of the authorities. Over the years the nuns in Roscrea sent around 450 children to America, and the Superioress, Sister Hildegarde McNulty, was once regarded by Catholic Charities as one of the three ‘most important people in the Irish adoption picture’.6 But there were some things Sister Hildegarde wanted to keep out of the picture.

  In February 1968, Margaret O’Neill, an unmarried teenager from County Clare, gave birth to a baby boy, Paul Anthony, at Sean Ross Abbey. For the next six months Margaret worked in the convent laundry and saw her child every day. She had every intention of keeping him and had made this clear, but the nuns had ideas of their own – although at no point did any of them bother discussing with Margaret what their plans for her child were. When she found out she was dumbfounded. It was one day in August 1968 when one of the girls in the laundry told her Paul Anthony was being taken away for adoption. The last Margaret saw of her child was when he was driven out of the convent gates in a car. She didn’t see him again for 22 years.

  Like many young and vulnerable girls at the time, Margaret O’Neill lived in fear of the nuns. Whatever selfconfidence or esteem she had before she went into Sean Ross Abbey, it had been well and truly knocked out of her after six months of Sister Hildegarde’s regime. ‘I had no one to turn to, no one to help me,’ Margaret said.7 She left Sean Ross Abbey shortly afterwards, still grieving for her lost son and feeling totally powerless.

  Margaret married in 1972. Her husband, Thomas McMahon, knew her story and wanted to help, but all their approaches to the Adoption Board proved futile, and Sister Hildegarde kept silent. It was 1989 before the Adoption Board finally agreed to investigate her case. She met members of the Board in a Limerick hotel, and when she gave a sample signature as requested, it was immediately obvious that the ‘signatures’ on her adoption consent forms were forgeries. In one ‘signature’ her name was even misspelt. The culprit had little regard for the law and clearly felt so secure and justified in what she was doing that she hadn’t even bothered trying to copy Margaret’s actual signature or spell her name correctly.

  Yet, as with all such consent documents, these had been witnessed and stamped by a Commissioner for Oaths. When asked to explain how something like this could happen, the lawyer said all he had sworn to was that the document was signed in his presence and that the person signing it was ‘known’ to Sister Hildegarde. The Adoption Board eventually confirmed to Margaret that her son’s adoption had been arranged personally by Sister Hildegarde. The Gardai investigated the case and sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but he decided not to prosecute.8 Sister Hildegarde was already in her 80s. Margaret McMahon had her position vindicated in a subsequent civil action in the courts against Sean Ross Abbey. They mounted no defence.

  Shortly before her death in 1995, Sister Hildegarde told a social worker that donations coming back from American adopters had constituted the largest single source of income for Sean Ross Abbey in the period when the adoptions were in full swing. She also admitted to removing and destroying documents from individual adoption files which related to these American payments.9 This was all done at a time when Sister Hildegarde feared a nationwide investigation by the authorities into adoption society practices following a very disturbing case that illustrated just how ramshackle Ireland’s adoption system really was. It was 1969, and a Waterford man had just been convicted for the manslaughter of his adopted daughter. The victim, a six- year-old girl, had been given to the man and his wife by their local priest, Father Keane, who ran St John’s Adoption Society. There had been no assessment of the couple’s suitability to adopt – had there been they would not have qualified. The Waterford scandal had led to the first serious questioning of Ireland’s adoption service. The adoption societies – including Father Keane’s – were all properly registered, but there was no requirement in law that they be regulated, and awareness was growing that the entire area was inadequately monitored and riddled with abuses. As it happened, Sr Hildegarde needn’t have worried: no one ever came to inspect the files.

  After its closure as an orphanage in 1970, the files from Sean Ross Abbey (as well as from Castlepollard) were sent to the Sacred Heart Convent at Bessboro in Cork, where for many years they were in the care of senior social worker Sister Sarto Harney. Sister Sarto said that after ‘serious allegations’ had been made about babies being sold to America, ‘we checked it out, we went through the files, and there is no evidence there of any money changing hands’. When asked if that could mean that the files were incomplete (as a result of Sr Hildegarde destroying the vital evidence), Sister Sarto said, ‘I don’t know. We only have what we have and we cannot comment other than that’.10

  9. Troublesome Priest

  ‘A practice which... does not appear to have been considered unacceptable.’

  Austin Currie, Minister of State for

  Children’s Policy, Dáil Éireann, 5 March 1996

  When news of Ireland’s past practice of dispatching ‘illegitimate’ children to America first broke on an unsuspecting public in 1996, the religious orders involved and other supporters of the scheme were quick to condemn those who criticised ‘with the benefit of hindsight’. The implication – voiced more explicitly by Junior Minister Austin Currie, who described it as a practice that was ‘not considered unacceptable’ – was that when it was happening, everyone approved. This is simply not so.

  As we have seen, two Ministers for Health in the 1950s, Noel Browne and Tom O’Higgins – at opposite ends of the political spectrum – voiced strong reservations, although neither followed through on their concerns. It is also clear that those most closely associated with the overall management of the scheme – Archbishop McQuaid and the Department of External Affairs – dreaded publicity, not least because they knew that if attention were focused on the practice, much of it would have been critical.

  At various points in contemporary documents it is even made plain that Archbishop McQuaid and his social welfare adviser, Cecil Barrett, were not all that keen on sending children abroad for adoption. They succumbed in the end to pressure from the nuns whose primary interest seems to have been to avoid congestion in the ‘orphanages’ while turning a useful profit from the abundance of babies for export. And when McQuaid and Barrett took an active hand in servicing the child export scheme, it was not because they thought it was a good idea in itself but because, as determined anti-proselytisers, they dreaded the alternative, where the children of many ‘fallen’ Irish Catholic mothers might fall in turn into the hands of Irish Protestant adopters, many of them north of the border.

  But there were others – admittedly few in number – whose opposition to the scheme was total and complete. Some argued against it consistently and refused – on principle – to assist in any way. Portarlington-born Monsignor Bryan Walsh was among them, and he was a leading figure within the Catholic Charities hierarchy, director of the organisation in Miami and one-time national Vice President. Before his sudden death from a heart attack in 2001, he expressed his views on the Irish baby export
business cogently and forcefully.1

  ‘There is no question in my mind that there has been a large international business in finding children for adoption and placing them in the United States – and I know there’s big money involved in it.’ Monsignor Walsh said. ‘I have no doubt there was money involved in the Irish adoptions – donations made to the orphanages, that sort of thing. It is accepted practice among Americans: anyone adopting a child in the States expects to have to contribute to the adoption service. The amounts are calculated on a sliding scale – the richer you are, the more you pay. I can’t quote figures for Irish adoptions, but I am sure money was involved.’

  Quite clearly the American couples who were able to adopt Irish children were privileged. They were jumping ahead of the queues in their homeland and they were getting babies who would be ‘guaranteed pure white’, something that would have enhanced their appeal and value to middle class white couples who could never be sure of the racial origins of children in American orphanages. ‘You have to understand the fundamental fact about adoption in America,’ Monsignor Walsh went on. ‘Demand has always been much greater than supply. That isn’t to say there is anything like a shortage of dependent children – there clearly isn’t. There are plenty of children in need of care, but many are of mixed blood, many are black, and white Americans won’t adopt them. And there have been many stories of white children who turn out to be carrying black genes which only become evident in the next generation. So the demand in certain quarters has been for white babies and what better place to get them than Ireland?’ The interplay of race and scarcity has always ensured a higher premium is placed on white babies.