Northern Ireland

Mother and Baby home survivor says only a full statutory inquiry will expose the truth

A consultation on a proposed investigation into Northern Ireland’s Mother and Baby homes and Magdalene laundries is to be completed at the end of this month. Claire Simpson speaks to Adele Johnstone, from Birth Mothers and their Children for Justice, about why survivors want nothing less than a full statutory inquiry.

Adele Johnstone was sent to Marianvale Mother and Baby home when she was a teenager. Picture by Mal McCann
Adele Johnstone was sent to Marianvale Mother and Baby home when she was a teenager. Picture by Mal McCann Adele Johnstone was sent to Marianvale Mother and Baby home when she was a teenager. Picture by Mal McCann

When Adele Johnstone was sent to Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry, she was given a new name.

The 69-year-old, who was born in Belfast, was just 18 when she gave birth to her son.

While in the home, she was called Bernadette.

When she left, changing her name felt like a way of forging a new identity.

“When I walked out of Marianvale I walked out a totally different person to when I walked in,” she said.

"I moved away from home to work. When I went there I decided to take my second name and I have used that from when I was 18.”

When Ms Johnstone was born in the 1950s, her mother was unmarried.

She was adopted as a young child but later suffered horrific abuse.

“It’s a mystery to me where I was for a year and 10 months, then I was adopted into a family,” she said.

“I was sexually abused between 10 and 12 by a paedophile (from outside her family). He groomed me. I was a very lonely wee child.

“My adopted mother really wasn’t the kindest of people. She kept telling me I was un-adoptable and my birth mother was a prostitute.

“Then later on when I was 17 I became pregnant and was brought to Marianvale. I was actually 18 by the time I went there. I was there for seven months. I gave birth to my son. He was approximately 12 weeks when he was adopted.”

Ms Johnstone said she was sent to Marianvale by her adopted mother and the parish priest.

“I wasn’t informed where I was going or what was happening,” she said.

“The treatment in there was beyond it. The violation of human rights was absolutely catastrophic.

“When I went to the hospital (Daisy Hill in Newry) I was treated with disdain and not very much care. I was left alone in a delivery suite almost to the point of delivery.

“I was put in the corner of a room and had to watch all these fond daddies and grandparents coming in to see the new babies. I was there all on my own without a sinner.”

Ms Johnstone said she was given no choice in her son’s adoption.

“From when we entered into the buildings (in Marianvale) they used coercive behaviour,” she said.

“They took our names off us; they drip-fed us with all sorts of things like ‘you’re unfit’, ‘you wouldn’t be able to look after this child’, ‘the child will have a better home elsewhere’, ‘you’re fallen girls’. It was just drip-drip-drip.

“We surrendered. We could not fight them.”

She said she never saw a social worker “but obviously there must have been someone involved somewhere”.

Adele Johnstone is campaigning for the survivors of Mother and Baby homes in the north. Picture by Mal McCann
Adele Johnstone is campaigning for the survivors of Mother and Baby homes in the north. Picture by Mal McCann Adele Johnstone is campaigning for the survivors of Mother and Baby homes in the north. Picture by Mal McCann

Ms Johnstone, who later married and had several more children, met her first-born son when he was an adult with children of his own.

She said the pair have a good relationship but nothing can make up for the years they lost.

“I know he had a good life and he had a good adoption but I can never replace those lost years,” she said.

“I can never have the relationship that I have with my other children.”

Mother and Baby homes, run by the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland and the Salvation Army, existed in Northern Ireland until the 1980s.

In January, a report by researchers from Queen’s University and Ulster University found that more than 10,000 women and children, including rape and incest victims and a girl as young as 12, were sent to homes in the north between 1922 and 1990.

Ms Johnstone said Birth Mothers and their Children for Justice want nothing less than a statutory inquiry into the homes.

“We have campaigned hard from 2013,” she said.

“We’ve lobbied, we’ve spoken to all sorts of people without really getting anywhere. Now we feel as if maybe we will.

“We are going to come up against these institutions which have power and money.

"The only way we can compel them is through a statutory inquiry to produce evidence, to produce documents.

“We’re worried sick about documents being destroyed. That is a big big issue for an adopted child. We cannot access our documents.”

The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry
The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry The former Marianvale Mother and Baby home in Newry

Ms Johnstone said every church or government body involved in the care of unmarried mothers and their children must be investigated, including the Catholic church and Good Shepherd Sisters, who ran Marianvale.

“The government were involved too because they paid to keep us there,” she said.

“There are all the institutions - Church of Ireland, Salvation Army, hospitals. There are nurses, doctors. They all knew what was going on behind closed doors.

“We were chucked away behind a huge white building in Marianvale where no-one could see us.”

Birth Mothers and their Children for Justice has written to the health committee and the leaders of the main parties asking for formal meetings before the consultation process is completed this month.

“We need to get the truth out there and get some justice for what was done in the name of Christianity and the moral code of Ireland,” she said.

She said any inquiry must address the movement of women and children between homes on both sides of the Irish border.

“You can’t move cattle or sheep across the border without paperwork but those children and women were moved back and forth with impunity.

“It’s a shameful episode. It’s time the light of day was shone on it.”

The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd have previously said that adoptions from Marianvale "were in compliance with national legislation - each mother had the assistance of an independent social worker who would have been directly involved in the adoption process".

Solicitor Claire McKeegan, of Phoenix Law, who is representing Birth Mothers and their Children for Justice, said any inquiry must have the power to compel witnesses and ensure the disclosure of documents.

“When these people are taking on institutions which have vast wealth, including the church orders and institutions, they need an inquiry which has full powers,” she said.

She added: “The truth of this must be exposed.”