Secret Identities

John Tuthill never knew his biological parents and the circumstances of his birth in Dublin 44 years ago remain a mystery.

Adopted as a baby in 1979, he has little idea about his original identity, despite a frustrating 13-year search.

Due to the complexities of adoption rules in the Republic of Ireland, John has an adoption certificate but no birth certificate.

Until now, Irish-born adoptees had no automatic right to the personal data they need to access their birth certificates – even their own name and their biological parents’ names could be kept from them.

It is a painful legacy from a recent period in modern Irish history when having a baby outside marriage was seen by many as shameful and socially unacceptable.

Due to the stigma, thousands of children born to single mothers ended up in the adoption system, where their names were changed and links to their birth families severed.

“Our identities were taken away from us.  They were hidden from us to facilitate closed, secret adoption,” says Claire McGettrick.

Named Lorraine Hughes at birth, and adopted in 1973, Ms McGettrick is now one of Ireland’s most influential adoption rights campaigners.

She is also a co-director of the Clann Project, which carries out research into how unmarried mothers and their children were treated in 20^th Century Ireland.

She says it is discriminatory to deny adoptees access to personal information that is routinely available to everyone else from the General Register Office.

“Birth certificates are public records, they have been over the past 150 years here in Ireland,” she explains.

“No other citizen has to jump through any hoops other than walking in and asking for their birth certificate.”

Adoptees’ original identity was kept secret for several reasons, including in cases where birth parents formally stated to authorities that they did not wish to be contacted by their child.

Previously, a birth parent's right to privacy could be given priority over their child’s right to know about their own birth, background and medical history.

However, the rules are changing under a new law which comes into full effect on 3 October.

The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 will give adult adoptees the right to access their birth certificate - a document which should tell them who their birth parents are.

The law also sets out how adoptees can apply for their childcare and family medical records, and makes it a criminal offence to destroy records relevant to adoption cases.

The Irish government hailed it as “landmark” legislation and undoubtedly, many people will finally get answers to lifelong questions.

But critics like the Clann Project argue adoptees will still face discrimination when accessing their own identity documents.

They also point out the law will not provide any additional rights to birth parents searching for their adult children.

As an adopted man, John Tuthill never felt the urge to search for his biological family until he became a father in his late 20s.

“The most remarkable thing for me was when my eldest son was born,” he says.

Moments after giving birth, John's wife handed their baby to him and said: "Meet your first blood relative."

“It was kind of an eye-opening moment,” he recalls.  “It wasn’t long after that then I was toying with the idea of finding my biological mother.”

But despite a 13-year search, John still has no confirmation of his birth identity.

Adopted as a baby in 1979 from St Patrick’s Guild adoption home in Blackrock, County Dublin, he has no memory of the woman who gave birth to him.

John was raised by a married couple in County Kildare, who brought him up as one of their three adopted children.

“It was pretty obvious to me that I was adopted, given that I was the only black kid in the family,” he laughs.

But he says his adoptive parents did everything they could to give him a “fantastic” childhood and he “couldn’t have asked for a better mum and dad”.

Up until now, adoptees in Ireland were not automatically entitled to see their birth records, but authorities could often release snippets of non-identifying information about their birth families.

A few months into his search, a social worker informed John that his birth mother had six children in total, but that he was the only one who had a different father.

John’s biological parents met in London in the late 1970s.

His mother was pregnant when she came home to Ireland.  She gave birth to John in a Dublin hospital and shortly afterwards he was placed for adoption.

“Unfortunately, it seems to be that she hadn’t told any of the rest of her family about me,” he says.

It appears that John’s biological father was never told about the pregnancy either.

According to his adoption records, John’s father was of Trinidad and Tobago descent and moved to Liverpool as a young boy.

“It was funny,” John laughs.  “I had always been a Liverpool supporter from the time I was a small fella.”

John’s parents were in their late 20s when he was born, so when his search started, he felt there was every chance they were still alive.

His overriding hope was to meet his birth mother, but in January 2010 a letter arrived at his home to inform him that she had died more than a decade earlier.

No meeting, no phone call, just a letter telling him his mother was dead.

“I had always thought I had prepared myself for the possibility that she might not be alive,” he says.

“When I got the letter in the post to say that she’d passed away… even though I didn’t know the woman, it was a real kick in the guts and it was a real tough time.”

Despite that devastating blow, John still held on to hope that he could meet his half-siblings.

In order to trace any surviving brothers or sisters, John needed to know his own birth name and his mother’s identity.

But for the last 13 years - due to privacy rules governing adoption tracing services - John has been denied access to this information.

It meant that not only has he been unable to contact his living blood relatives, he could not even find out where his late mother was buried.

But rules are changing. 

From now on, all legally adopted adults will be able to access their birth certificates, regardless of the circumstances of their birth.

John says as soon as his birth name is confirmed he will try again to contact his half-siblings and search for any surviving aunts and uncles.

But he is also aware of the possibility of rejection and will respect their wishes if they decide not to meet him.

“I have a whole other family out there to discover. They either accept me or they don’t,  I don’t care, but at least I’ll know,” he says.

“For me, it’s just about completing me and, be it in a negative way or a positive way, at least it’ll be done.”

John is just one of thousands of people hoping the new Birth Information and Tracing Act will answer lifelong questions.

Loraine Jackson’s Irish birth certificate states she was born in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, 1948.

But that isn’t true, she was actually born in Northern Ireland and was one of hundreds of babies moved across the Irish border for adoption.

Her real birth certificate shows she was born in Belfast’s Jubilee Maternity Hospital to a single mother called Annie Smith.

At the time, Annie was living in Woodvale Avenue in the north of the city, but she was originally from County Meath in the Republic of Ireland.

“I don’t know how she ended up in Belfast,” Loraine says of the mother she never got to know.

When she was just a few weeks old, Loraine was taken to the Bethany Home in Dublin, a Protestant-run institution which housed unmarried mothers and children.

She still does not know who took her over the border or how she made that journey. 

At that time, adoption had been regulated in her native Northern Ireland for almost 20 years and the consent of a parent or guardian was required.

But it would be another four years before adoption was regulated in the Republic of Ireland.

Loraine spent the next few months in Bethany until adopted by a Protestant couple in Dublin.

In 1990, she began searching for her birth family, by which stage she was a mother in her early 40s.

“I started it off by writing to the Adoption Board in Ireland, which was the procedure at the time,” she explains.

During initial meetings with social workers, details of Loraine’s early life began to emerge, including the unexpected fact that she had been born in the UK.

But progress was slow and frustrated by privacy rules.

“They give you little titbits to tempt you," Loraine recalls. "But in general they’re tied to the laws and that’s it.”

Being born in a different jurisdiction complicated her search, but Loraine’s UK birth rights gave her an information advantage over adoptees born in the Republic.

The Adoption (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 had given adult adoptees the right to apply to the Registrar General for copy of their birth certificate.

However, as she was dealing mainly with social workers in the Republic, she did not know about this rule and spent the next quarter of a century with more questions than answers.

It was 2016 before Loraine received her first official copy of her Northern Ireland birth certificate. 

The document made no mention of her birth father.

Loraine also obtained her baptismal record which shows she was christened Elsie Lillian Patricia Smith in St James’ Church of Ireland in Belfast in April 1948.

But getting hold of birth documents is no substitute for hugging a family member.

So she turned to an increasing popular method of family tracing which can often sidestep the authorities and international borders altogether – DNA tests.

The tests produced limited success at first, but during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown she tried a new company and got a surprise result.

“It’s almost immediate… I got this email to say so-and-so is your half-sister,” Loraine recalls.

“And not only had I a sister, I ended up having three sisters and three brothers who are children of my birth father, but a different birth mother.”

DNA tests also identified a distant relative on her mother’s side, a link which helped Loraine to find out a little more about the woman who gave birth to her.

“We found out that my mum had run away to the north of England and she ended up getting married and had another child, who is deceased unfortunately.

“But that would mean I would have seven siblings that I never knew about until two years ago.”

Ireland’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns meant Loraine could not meet her surviving relatives immediately, but as soon as restrictions lifted, she went to see her four half-siblings who still live in Ireland.

“Ah, it was great, it was lovely,” she says.  “They're absolutely smashing people.”

Inevitably, the conversation turned to family resemblances.

“It’s so strange looking at people that look like you,” Loraine says.

“Because other than my own children, I never could see myself in anybody else, because I didn't know anybody who should look like me.

“But I mean, we’re the image of each other.”

This summer, Loraine’s siblings brought her with them to England to meet her two remaining brothers for the first time, including the baby of the bunch who is now in his 60s.

She says she has been “accepted whole-heartedly” by her new-found family.

“It’s just wonderful because I seemed to be in this fog before and the fog has lifted.”

But there are still many questions Loraine wants answered now that the full Birth Information and Tracing Act has taken effect.

Some relate to the care she received in the Bethany Home.

“My adoptive dad always said that I was in a dreadful state when they had me first,” she explains.

He told her she had severe nappy rash and did not look like a healthy baby.

Loraine has also suffered lifelong dental problems and wonders how much of that may stem from a lack of care in Bethany.

The ill-treatment of women and children in Irish mother and baby homes was by no means the sole preserve of the Catholic Church.

Bethany was among several institutions examined by Ireland’s Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, a major inquiry which concluded last year.

In its final report, the commission said: “A very high rate of infant mortality was a common feature of all mother and baby homes until the late 1940s and Bethany was no exception.”

It said 262 children who spent time in the Bethany Home died in childhood, with the highest number of deaths recorded in the 1930s and 1940s.

Overcrowding, under-qualified staff, inadequate health facilities and Bethany’s “frequently dire financial pressures” were listed as contributory factors in the high death rate.

The full circumstances of Loraine’s cross-border journey are still to be revealed but it was not unique for a Bethany resident.

Of the 1,584 women who entered the home during its half century in operation, 139 gave addresses in Northern Ireland.  

The home closed in 1971.

Evidently, mothers and children were sent in both directions.

A 2021 report into mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland concluded that “there was considerable cross-border movement of babies”.

It calculated that at least 493 babies born in Catholic mother and baby homes were moved across the border to the Republic of Ireland between 1942 and 1990.

The same cross-border journey was made by 58 children from the Salvation Army’s Thorndale House in Belfast between 1930 and 1970.

But the researchers said that without access to individual adoption files on both sides of the border “it cannot be confirmed that these adoptions were carried out following due legal process”.

Campaigner Claire McGettrick said she had come across “countless instances” of cross-border adoption because many religious orders continued to operate on an all-Ireland basis long after partition.

“Cross-border traffic was extremely common in my experience and I think the answer, as always, is access to records on an all-island basis so that we can truly understand this system.”