Mum: ‘Catholic adoption agency lied about where my son was’

After giving up her baby for adoption in 1961, Tressa Reeves was told that her son had been adopted by a family in the United States and was denied any further details about his wellbeing or whereabouts.

However, more than 50-years later, Reeves (nee Donnelly) discovered that her baby boy, who she had named Andre, had actually grown up in Tullow, in County Carlow, Ireland, and went by the name Patrick Farrell.

Reeves was sent from her home in England to Ireland for “work experience” shortly after falling pregnant in the early 1960s, and gave birth to her son in a house in Clontarf in Dublin, which had been arranged through the St Patrick’s Guild, run by the Sisters of Charity. 

Read more: Baby put up for secret adoption in 1949 reunites with family six decades later.

She gave birth on March 13, 1961 and was then taken away to sign various forms consenting to the adoption of her baby, which Reeves’ lawyer has now described as “false, legal nullities” saying the documents carried “none of the required legal safeguards”.

The High Court has heard that the woman and her son, who reunited in 2013, are seeking damages over the adoption, and the pair are now suing St. Patrick’s Adoption Agency, the Irish state and the attorney-general, reports the Irish Times.

Eanna Mulloy, Senior Counsel for the pair, said that Reeves was from a respectable religious family in England that had connections in Ireland. She became pregnant shortly before her 21st birthday and it was arranged that she would travel to Ireland for “work experience”.

Read more: Mothers forced into adoption want an apology from the past.

When Reeves visited Ireland seeking information about her son, Mulloy said, she was brushed off by the nuns she dealt with at the Guild, and a person who worked at the clinic where she gave birth suggested that her son had been sent to the US, before she was advised that she entitled to any information because the adoptive family had a right to privacy.

However when Reeves finally got access to her son’s file she discovered that the names of the family who had adopted her son had been blacked out, with Molloy adding that his client had been “duped and cheated, through and through”.

It has also been argued that the defendants did not assess the suitability of the adoptive couple, and that Farrell had been subjected to violence and physically harmed by his adoptive father.

Read more: The dilemma of adoption and tracing your birth family.

Farrell is seeking damages and exemplary damages on grounds including that his constitutional rights were breached. It is alleged that the state has failed to vindicate or recognise the mother and son’s rights, claims that have been denied.

Farrell said it was a “bombshell” to find out he had been adopted. “You couldn’t write that,” he said, adding that his mother had been “given the runaround for years”.

What are your thoughts about the adoption practices of the 1960s?