IRELAND
The Journal

DEIRDRE WADDING WAS 18-years-old when she entered the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork.

It was 1981, and though Wadding said she was not a victim of “cruelty or physical abuse”, she, like the other girls at the home, suffered emotional and psychological abuse that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

“I shared a room with a girl who was only 13-years-old, she was a child. I was 18, she sobbed her heart out for her mother every night and I mean it was incredibly, incredibly traumatic,” she said.

“The trauma of banishment, you had the trauma of guilt and shame that was imposed by the very fact of being there. You had the enormous trauma and sorrow of loss of your child being placed for adoption and that’s something that’s left a lasting impact on my life.”

Speaking to TheJournal.ie…