Undue Pressure to Give up Her Daughter

A MUM has revealed her enduring heartache more than 30 years after her newborn baby was taken for adoption against her will.

Bernadette Wallman says she came under undue pressure to give up her two-week-old daughter by a charity linked to the Catholic Church.

Bernadette, originally from Kirkcudbright, in south west Scotland, was emotionally and physically unwell when she agreed to the adoption.

The 56-year-old midwife believes the pressure was applied because the charity had identified adoptive parents who they did not want to disappoint.

She has since gone on to have five other children and has met the daughter she gave up but she says
the relationship is strained. It is the latest of hundreds of thousands of cases to emerge in which women say they were forced to give children up by charities and local authorities across the UK.

Now living near Brisbane, Australia, Bernadette is consulting British lawyer Peter Garsden to investigate her case with a view to suing.

She said: “I’m doing this because I believe it’s time the truth about our country’s forced adoption policies of the past comes out. Thousands of us are still living with the shame and the pain over what was done to us.

“If what happened to me then was repeated today, I believe it would be called kidnapping.

“I was a student nurse, just 22, when I became pregnant in 1983.

“The baby’s father was a student and didn’t want to know. My mum died when I was six so I felt very alone. I
was a devout Catholic and asked my priest for help.”

Undue Pressure to Give up Her Daughter