Wonderful adoption story by Pam Linn! The fact that she had tried and failed over the years to find her lost daughter, and that she had never revealed to her family that there was a sister or daughter to be found, must have been such a huge heart-opener for those who are left to enjoy this extension of family. My heart was opened just reading her saga.
The new Judi Dench film, “Philomena,” which has received rave reviews, has a much more tainted back history featuring the Magadelene Homes, which were sort of reformatories for “fallen” young women from the mid-18th century until 1996 in Ireland and England. In return for hiding a girl’s “shame,” one was required to give up one’s nine-month, potentially traumatically gestated baby, to adoptive parents, sign a paper saying one would never search for them and work in the facility’s laundry to pay off one’s costs.
From my reading, it seems girls who ran away were delivered straight back to their slavery by the police. There was even a 2011 case taken in their name to the U.N. Committee for torture, due to the degrading treatment they suffered, and a movement to get the women retirement pensions for all the labor performed and never paid for. Thankfully, the 1950s in the U.S. weren’t Draconian and, as in Ms. Linn’s case, finding one’s progeny has more legal sanctions than previously available.
Beate Nilsen