IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Lynne Kelleher
Irish children adopted by rich American families in the 50s and 60s have spoken of their harrowing Stateside childhoods in a new BBC documentary.
In the wake of Philomena, Martin Sixsmith — the journalist who wrote the book on which the Oscar-nominated film was based — decided to probe further into the Church’s role in an adoption trade which saw an estimated 2,000 illegitimate children taken from their mothers and sent abroad.
The BBC Two documentary, Ireland’s Lost Babies, sees Mr Sixsmith criss-crossing the US discovering evidence that prospective parents were not properly vetted by the Church.
“The more you talk to the children who were sent out to America — and there were hundreds of them — the more you realise what a lottery the whole system was,” says Mr Sixsmith.
“Some of the children had happy lives with the families they were sent to but many of them didn’t. Some of them were physically and sexually abused.”
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