Free Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland's Baby Export Business by Mike Milotte Page B

Irish history and culture, they had no Irish background at all. So I was left with this picture, from St Patrick’s Day really, of the Irish as people who dyed their hair green and drank green beer and ate green cakes. It was weird. I was kind of repulsed by it and yet I knew this was where I was from.’
    But if her Irish identity remained a source of anguish for Maureen, Catholicism served her no better. ‘Church was the big deal. I knew a lot more about the whole Catholic tradition than I knew about Ireland, that was for sure. My parents were very Catholic, very, very Catholic. It was church, church, church. And of course I went to a Catholic school. You could say I was steeped in Catholicism.’ But Maureen never found the doctrine easy to accept. ‘In school, I was always raising questions, like about the wealth of the church and how that fitted with Jesus overturning the money changers. And about priests drinking. And just why this and why that. I never accepted anything without asking why, and of course they didn’t like that. I was made sit in the corner and told I was a sinner and to stop asking questions. I’d get banged about a bit as well. I remember before confession once, saying I didn’t have any sins to confess and being told to make a few up. Of course when I said that would be telling a lie and a lie was a sin, I was in big trouble. You couldn’t question anything. It was all very controlled, very strict. Every area of your life they tried to control. I just couldn’t take it.’
    When Maureen was ten years old her school called her parents in and told them they didn’t consider Maureen a suitable pupil. She was taken out of the school and put into the public school system. ‘When I left Catholic school and went public, they were very, very angry about that. In fact they were furious, especially my mother. She was very upset that I wasn’t going to get a Catholic education. I remember they even tried to bribe me to stay in Catholic school by telling me I’d get a car when I was old enough if I went to a Catholic University. I was just a child. You don’t think that far ahead when you are a child, so promises like that really didn’t have any impact. But looking back I can see now how important the whole Catholic education thing was to them.’ Only in later life, when Maureen looked more closely at the box of papers she had found as a child in her parents’ bottom drawer did she see the copy of the affidavit Jim and Dorothy Rowe had signed all those years ago. They had sworn a solemn oath that if the nuns in Ireland gave them a child they would educate her in Catholic schools, all the way through to university. ‘When I saw that affidavit and read it, I understood why they had reacted as they did when I left the Catholic school system. I had made them break their word. My mother especially was obsessed about it. It really had a huge impact on her and on the way she treated me. I can now see it was around then she really got to be very harsh towards me. She had wanted to make me turn out like her, and it wasn’t happening.’
    It was around this time that Mrs Rowe added a new dimension to the story about Maureen’s adoption. ‘She started telling me I had been an unwanted baby, that my real mother didn’t love me, that she had abandoned me, and that I should show more gratitude to her for taking me in. It was all this stuff about how awful and terrible my natural mother had been and how wonderful she was to have given me a home. I suppose it was to make me feel guilty as much as grateful, you know, because I wasn’t turning out to be such a good Catholic after all.’ Harsh words were followed by harsh treatment, but Maureen doesn’t like to dwell on that side of the story.
    For the next 25 years of her life, Maureen lived with this image of herself as an unwanted, unloved, abandoned baby. ‘All my life I carried that, because of the way it was presented to me. She never missed an