Karen hopes site will end search for mother

KAREN GRATTAN has spent 17 years searching for her natural mother. Her search has been hampered by a paper trail containing false information and a history of non-cooperation from State and private agencies.

Now the 35-year-old is hoping a new contact register for adopted persons and natural parents will lead to a reunion with her mother.

A publicity drive for the National Adoption Contact Preference Register is underway and Karen is hoping a woman aged no more than her early 60s who gave birth to a child in a Dublin hospital in 1969 will register her details. Karen was adopted through the St Patrick’s Guild agency.

After all these years searching, Karen does not even know if her natural mother wants to get in touch. She would be hugely disappointed if that was the case.

“I suppose I have a hell of a lot of unanswered questions,” she says.

The questions range from looks - Karen is tall, thin with long dark hair, in contrast with the rest of her mainly short, red haired family - to identity to medical history. Karen and her partner - who is also adopted - have a child and she wants to know more about her family’s medical history.

The new register, which goes live on May 3, is designed to make it easier for both adopted persons and their natural parents to get in touch.

Minister for Children Brian Lenihan said many people in Ireland had been touched by adoption, which was not as open a process in the past as it was now.

“It was a closed and secret experience, considered to be a final break in the relationship between the child and their background. It’s now recognised to be a lifelong experience,” he said.

Karen is scathing about a system that allowed private agencies to illegally falsify papers and force parents to give guarantees they would never attempt to trace and contact their children.

“Generally mothers were told to go away and forget about it; that they would get over it,” said Karen, who works as a research officer with the Adopted People’s Association.

In her own case, when a trace was carried out on the name of the woman she thought was her mother, it was discovered there was no record of that person.

Until recently, State agencies had also been unhelpful, stalling or refusing to give information, Karen argues. Changes are happening and the register is evidence of that.

People registering with the service will be able to state what level of contact they would like to have, ranging from contact by letter to meeting in person.

If they want no contact they will still have the opportunity to provide medical or background information to relatives searching for them.

Adoption Board chief executive John Collins said the board had received 2,000 enquiries from people affected by adoption last year. There are 47,000 people in Ireland adopted under the 1952 adoption act.

Those searching for their families were typically adopted children who had reached their 30s and started their own families, or parents in their 50s and 60s who gave up their children.

A similar scheme in Scotland suggested that around one in 15 registrations led to a match. Information on the register can be found at www.adoptionboard.ie or by phoning 1800 309 300.