- Have YOU been affected by the forced adoption scandal? Email sophie.carlin@dailymail.co.uk
On November 5, 1964, a terrified 17-year-old went into labour at the Tower Maternity Annexe in north London’s Bishops Avenue, known widely as Billionaire’s Row.
Named for the home of music hall star Gracie Fields, called ‘Tower’, the grounds of which it sat in, the Annex was an opulent building, with sweeping staircases.
But the scenes inside it were dreadful. As a frightened Pat cried, a nurse simply told her, ‘You made your bed, you can lie in it’ – and left her in labour alone.
The teen mother haemorrhaged twice giving birth – but when she returned to the delivery suite after treatment for it, her daughter was gone.
Zara Phillips, now 60, had been taken into foster care without Pat’s consent and was adopted by a family three months later, growing up in north London’s Totteridge area.
She would not see her birth mother again for 24 years – but is glad to have made it out alive, with nearly 70 similar babies found in mass unmarked graves just last week.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, the singer-songwriter, who now splits her time between London and New Jersey, said when she heard this news: ‘I cried so much. I thought, “That could have been me”.’
Ms Phillips and her mother are among tens of thousands of women and children affected by the forced adoption scandal – right here in this country.
From 1949 to 1976, around a quarter of a million pregnant women and girls were sent to mother and baby homes, run by the church, state and charitable organisations.
Seen as unsuitable parents after becoming pregnant unmarried (considered ‘the worst crime’ at the time, Ms Phillips said), their children were taken from them.
And the homes themselves served to make the women feel shame and guilt, with some forcing them to undertake menial labour.
‘There’s a lot of stuff that people know about Ireland. They know about the Magdalene laundries, the way the nuns treated [people],’ she explained.
‘There’s been a lot about that but there has not been a lot of talk about what was going on in the UK.’
And Ms Phillips has herself now written a book and made a film, both called Somebody’s Daughter, to raise awareness – and continue to campaign for an official government apology.
The recently discovered horrifying mass burial was of children who died at an institution for unmarried mothers in Newcastle – Hopedene Maternity Home, run by the Salvation Army, which operated from 1950 to 1973.
The some 67 babies were born and died there before being buried in unmarked graves without their family’s knowledge, ITV News found.
Victims were forced into adoption in the sense that, Ms Phillips explained: ‘Nobody said, “Do you want to keep your baby?”
‘It was, “You are not keeping your baby because you are this age and you’d be very selfish and you’ve been a very bad girl and this child will have no future with you.
“So, it’s coming with us, we’ll give it to a family with a mum and a dad, it will have a better life, the baby will never know, you’ll go on to have your own children”.’
When Pat’s mother discovered she was pregnant, then 16, she hid her away with the teenager’s uncle in his flat in the Shepherd’s Bush area of London.
‘Her brother and the rest of the family were told she was working, that she got a job… She was only allowed out at night, just so nobody knew,’ Ms Phillips explained.
As she neared full term, Pat was taken to a mother and baby home in the capital’s North Finchley area, where she had to do errands, washing and cleaning.
Her daughter said: ‘It wasn’t that she was treated horribly but it was still the fact she had to do these errands while she’s nine months’ pregnant.’
Does Pat blame her own mother? ‘She said to me, “If my mum had been stronger and said she would keep you, then it wouldn’t have happened”.
‘Well, maybe, yes, and I’m sure she did blame her mother to a point but I also reminded her society was so against it.’
Like many of the mothers forced to give their children up, Pat did not tell anyone what had happened to her for many years.
She eventually confided in a friend and, shortly before getting married, her soon-to-be husband: ‘She was crying and he said, “Why are you crying?”
‘And she said, “I’ve had a baby, it’s her birthday and I’m thinking about her”.
‘So, he was very accepting of her and said, “I’ll still marry you, that’s OK”. But some men don’t.’
Meanwhile, Ms Phillips grew up with her adopted family.
She always knew she was adopted, with the help of a sixties picture book many adoptees were given called Mr Fairweather And His Family.
But her adopted mother, who passed away in 2008, would say: ‘”You’re adopted but if you wanted to know [your birth mother], it would devastate me”.
‘So, I lived with wanting to please her, not wanting to be rejected again in any shape or form and terrified of that.’
Ms Phillips feels this came from her adopted mother’s struggles with her own infertility: ‘There was no support.
‘There was no, “You need to grieve for the loss that you can’t have your own natural child”.
‘Adopting a baby is not actually going to fix that part of you. It will help but it’s not going to fix that…
‘We all have the same fear. I was scared of being abandoned and rejected again. My adopted mother was scared of me leaving her.’
Ms Phillips’ difficulties with this saw her fall into a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction from a young age.
‘Because I felt abandoned – whether I was or not is irrelevant, I felt abandoned – I continued to abandon myself’, she explained.
‘By wanting to annihilate myself, not being able to cope with this feeling of having no centre, no grounding.
‘I don’t look like anybody in my family, I’m put with these strangers. I had terrible separation anxiety as a child so I self-medicated.’
She got sober aged 22 and has been ever since: ‘When I got sober, what came up was I need to find my birth mother.
‘I need my chapter one. I’ve been living my life on chapter two. And I need to know what happened.
‘”No matter what it is”, I said to myself, “I will cope”. And then I find out it’s this huge thing that I’m connected to.’
After a lengthy search, she eventually found and met Pat – who she calls by her first name – in 1988, when she was 24, finding out the true reason behind her adoption.
‘Nobody tells you when you’re younger’, she explained. ‘We were all told, “Your mother was young, she couldn’t take care of you”.
‘So, in my mind, I thought there must have been something wrong with my mother.
‘Maybe she was mentally ill, maybe she was a drug addict, maybe she was a prostitute, maybe she’s in prison.
‘All these things in my head. Maybe there’s something with me – she took one look at me and she thought I was ugly.’
This anger continued even after she met Pat: ‘I thought, “How could you walk away from me?” I would never have done that. How could you do that?
‘I couldn’t get it… I was really judgmental.’
She continued: ‘”Her parents should have just helped her and she should have been stronger”, I was very much like that for a long time.’
But over the years, she has understood it more, by going to support groups, which she said ‘saved’ her and gave her new ‘compassion’ and ‘understanding’ for both her mothers.
‘I think, “Oh my God, she had no support, nothing”‘, Ms Phillips explained.
‘And she was young. And I have daughters and I looked at them at those ages and I would see how young they really are.
‘When you’re 16, you’re so young. How would you suddenly go into the world and get a job and take care of a baby?
‘I know one mother that did but it’s very rare and she lived in absolute squalor because she got no government support…
‘”Well, I don’t care, if that were me, I would never have done that”. Well, of course, who knows what I would have done?’
Her adopted mother, who Ms Phillips calls ‘mum’, also struggled with her daughter reconnecting with her birth mother.
‘It was this fantasy in her head, “This woman’s better than me, she’s young, she could have babies, I couldn’t have babies”‘, Ms Phillips said.
‘My mum admitted to me once she didn’t feel like a woman because she couldn’t have a baby, when I had my babies.’
She also struggled when Ms Phillips got married, preventing her from inviting Pat to the wedding.
Ms Phillips even put off telling her adoptive family she had found and met her birth mother for two years, for fear of the fallout.
‘I was so terrified to tell my mum, I thought, “She’s going to not want me anymore”…
‘And then when I finally told her, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” And I said, “Because you never freaking speak about this, I didn’t know what to do!”
‘And she actually never did really talk about it a lot.’
But her adopted mother eventually reconciled with Pat for their shared daughter’s sake: ‘She spoke to her on the phone one time, four months before she died.
‘Because Pat said to me, “I really want to talk to your mum, do you think she will ever talk to me?”
‘And I said, “Mum, she would love that, will you do it for me?… It’s never changed, I’m still your daughter, I’m not going anywhere. I have two mothers, this is my reality”…
‘I felt she was giving me her blessing finally.’
It was a massive change from life before: ‘We were all told to be quiet, “don’t tell anyone”, even my mum, “don’t tell anyone you’re adopted, people don’t need to know”.
Later in life, when Ms Phillips was 51, she connected with her birth father Vittorio too using Ancestry DNA, which she said helped her finally feel ‘complete’.
Amazingly, he lived only an hour away from her in New Jersey – and the pair formed ‘an instant connection’, speaking on the phone every day.
He tragically suddenly died from a heart attack in January 2019, two years after they reconciled and just nine months after her adopted father had also passed away.
She also ended up connected to seven siblings on her father’s side as well as a whole range of extended relatives, including her aunt and cousins.
And now, Ms Phillips works with the Movement for Adoption Apology and Adult Adoptee group to campaign for a public apology from the UK government to victims of forced adoption.
An official public apology has already been issued in other countries where forced adoption occurred, including the Republic of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Australia and Canada.
Ms Phillips suggested they stage a protest and take a letter of petition to Downing Street – which around 100 of them did in July, organised by her.
And now former prime minister Gordon Brown has similarly urged the government to formally apologise for the ‘terrible tragedy’ of forced adoption.
The Labour ex-PM told ITV News last week he had personally contacted the Department for Education about the matter, saying it should never have happened.
He called for the official statement in the House of Commons upon MPs’ return from summer recess to recognise ‘the damage that was done’.
He said: ‘It was unfair to everybody in the end, and the fact that we can now do something, not to rectify the problem, but to apologise for what happened, I think is really important.
‘It’s important for people who are distressed…
‘I think that now the government has been in power and has had the chance to look at this, I think the Autumn will be the time to make the apology.’
It comes after an inquiry by the Joint Committee of Human Rights found in 2021 the state was ultimately responsible for the suffering of the forced adoption era.
Their findings called for the government to officially apologise – which has not yet come.
Ms Phillips said: ‘We don’t want just, “Oh, we’re so sorry”. We want a big event.
‘We want to be acknowledged in a huge way, like in Australia – all the mothers and kids came and the Prime Minister did this beautiful talk.
‘And the mothers are dying. I’m 60, our mothers are young, but hey, they’re heading for 80, some of them have already died. Time is running out.
‘We feel we are the same as the Post Office scandal, the same as the blood scandal. We’re no different. We put ourselves now in that group so time is of the essence.’
In the Republic of Ireland, there is a compensation scheme for victims of forced adoption. Would Ms Phillips like the same here?
‘I don’t know. Maybe some mothers feel that. To me, what’s it going to do?
‘To me, if they’re going to give us any money, it should go to helping with the emotional challenges we have.
‘Proper trained therapists that can come to support. Adoptees need it.’
A government spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘This abhorrent practice should never have taken place, and our deepest sympathies are with all those affected.
‘We take this issue extremely seriously and continue to engage with those affected to provide support.’
A Newcastle City Council spokeperson has previously issued a apology to the families affected by the mass burial of children born at Hopedene.
On the same matter, a Salvation Army spokesperson has previously said: ‘We are deeply saddened to hear of the traumatic experiences that some people endured in the care of The Salvation Army decades ago
‘We acknowledge that there are some who did not always receive the support they needed and deserved, for which we are deeply sorry.’
They expressed gratitude to those who have spoken out about their ‘painful’ experiences: ‘These are important stories that should be heard.
‘Not knowing where your baby is buried is incredibly traumatic and if there are former Hopedene mothers who have experienced this, please get in touch.
‘We cannot promise that our archives will be able to answer your questions but we will share what we can.’
Ms Phillips is always happy to hear from other survivors via her website.
