In the second of our series on adoption one woman reveals how being coerced into giving up her child in the Sixties led her to set up an agency dedicated to helping mothers trace their lost children. And, sadly, she is by no means alone in her suffering.

A sixteen-year-old Newcastle girl discovers she is pregnant. Terrified of how her parents might react, she tries to contact the Irish Catholic father of her unborn child . But she is betrayed by a 'friend'.

Her parents immediately send her to a Church-run, unmarried mothers' home called Elswick Lodge, where she lives for the duration of her pregnancy. After a difficult birth during which she haemorrhages twice, she has a baby daughter. She wants to keep the infant but her parents say they do not want the child of a "papist" in the family.
Not knowing what to do, she asks for advice from a moral-welfare worker who tells her that, as a single mother, she is not entitled to any help or support. "So if you really love your child," the welfare worker says, "you would give her up for adoption."

"They ignored social workers guidelines and they broke the law"

It sounds like a Catherine Cookson novel but this story really happened. And not the 18th or 19th Century but in 1962.
Pat Basquill's experience is one of many where it is alleged a number of Church-run institutions systematically coerced single mothers into giving up newborn babies for adoption during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.
More than half a million women are believed to have given up a child for adoption in the UK since 1950. When Basquill's daughter was born, she became one of more than 600 babies being adopted nationwide each week.
Compare that to the present rate of 400 annually.
But it wasn't indiscriminate. The adopted babies had to be white, in good health and without any "physical defects"
­ a term which included mixed parentage or red hair. These children where usually going to affluent, childless couples and they demanded children who could be credibly brought up in their image ­ and class.
Seventeen years after losing her daughter, Basquill set up Trackers International, an organisation which helps such mothers and adopted children trace each other with a view to reconciliation.
"There was a lot of help available for single parents through the provision of the National Assistance Scheme set up between 1946 and 1948.
Single mothers were entitled to the same level of benefit as widowed mothers," Basquill says. "We were even entitled to rent and rate-free houses and help with living expenses for the baby. But in my case, I was told no one would help me because, the welfare worker said, it would be condoning immorality.
"I even tried to get my daughter into temporary foster care and this was rejected. What it came down to was that they had thousands of childless couples and they had to find a supply of babies through the adoption process. They did this by not telling unmarried mothers their rights."
Basquill pulls no punches in her conclusions about what went on in many of these unmarried mothers' homes. "They ignored social workers guidelines and they broke the law. The law states that any contract signed as a result of coercion or duress is null and void.
"In those days a 16-year-old could not sign a hire-purchase contract to buy a record player but they were being made to sign legally-binding adoption contracts. It was completely unregulated; during that time as many as 600 babies a week were being adopted but no one looked at the figures to find out why so many unmarried mothers were giving up their children.
"A lot of young mums were being told they were not capable of looking after children and were being very selfish by not giving them up for adoption."

"The vast majority of these mothers were used as breeders and the babies were commodities"

Basquill herself was told she had no choice; if she tried to keep her baby, the child would be taken off her anyway and end up in a Church of England childrens home.
The treatment of the women in these homes left further scars. Of the hundreds she has been in contact with, Basquill says only a handful say they received post-natal care after giving birth. A shocking 30 per cent became infertile as a result."Everything they did was designed to punish you," Basquill says. "I didn't have a clue what was going to happen to me when I gave birth. I had never had any sex education at school and asked a nurse at Elswick Lodge how babies were born. She replied: 'You'll find out soon enough and then you won't sin again'."

A LEGACY OF GUILT STILL HAUNTS MANY WOMEN COERCED INTO GIVING UP THEIR CHILDREN.
ILLUSTRATION: DANIEL COOKNEY

Basquill adds: "Pain relief was routinely withheld. It was all part of the punishment.
"I was in an unheated dormitory with seven other girls and their babies. We were made to work scrubbing floors and the like. In the nursery there used to be a plaque that stated: 'When lust has conceived it brings forth sin' ­ James, chapter one, verse five or 15 I think."
She adds: "I was discharged from hospital after three weeks and taken to the VD (venereal disease) clinic with my baby for her to be tested ­ even though there was no need because I had been already and it was negative. The whole idea was to punish and humiliate me."
It is believed there were about 800 unmarried mothers' homes identified in the UK between the Forties and Sixties but there may have been many more.

"A lot of the women affected have had their whole lives shaped by what happened to them"

The majority were run by Christian churches: Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Salvation Army. And they weren't free.
Basquill bluntly describes them as "conveyor belts for adoption".
"It was a conspiracy ­ fast-track adoption. The vast majority of these mothers were used as breeders and the babies were commodities."
She says this was in marked contrast to the NHS-funded local-authorities' homes which did tend to offer residents an informed choice - even encouraging the babies fathers to become involved.
However, more disturbing still is that Basquill believes there is evidence to suggest some babies may have been 'sold' to adoptive couples. "A lot of money changed hands between childless couples and the homes or churches in the form of gifts. One girl who I met who was also at Elswick Lodge told me her adoptive parents admitted they handed over a 'considerable amount' to the lodge around the time they adopted her.
Basquill says records from the lodge highlight serious discrepancies which could back this up. Some 183 babies were born to mothers there between 1960 and 1962. Of those, 11 were sent to childrens homes or placed in care, 70 were given up for adoption, 57 remained with their mothers and five died. However, some 39 appear unaccounted for. So far there is no record of what happened to them.
Basquill is calling for a public inquiry into what happened during that 30-year period but believes the Government is reluctant to conduct one. "Their excuse is it does not happen now; but that is no excuse at all."
And she is adamant that it is not about seeking compensation. "How can you compensate for such a thing? It is always there at the back of your mind. It never goes away.
"We do not want pity or sympathy, we just want justice and we have not had it so far.
"It would help if the Government would tell adoptees that what happened was not just a slip up and that the majority of birth mothers wanted to keep their babies but were lied to."
Basquill's call is backed by Conservative MP Sir Teddy Taylor, who believes a public inquiry would help to reconcile many adoptees with their birth mothers.
He says that, although he was initially sceptical, he is now genuinely convinced by their case. "They feel a sense of great sadness because they were 'maneouvered' into having their children adopted.
"They just want to let their children know what happened and in the few cases where they have been able to, it has been a success.
"It should be taken seriously because of what the mothers involved have been through."
However, he also thinks most of those who were involved in what went on genuinely believed they were doing it for good reasons.
"At the time it was not considered appropriate for women to have children out of wedlock and it was just that they were forced into doing it by the circumstances of the time.
"It was accepted at the time as being a fair and reasonable thing to do."
Taylor says he would like to see a public inquiry to get the facts about what happened across. He believes the subsequent publicity would then get through to the adoptees affected. "Someone in authority, a government minister, needs to make a significant speech about it to get across the truth about what happened."
Stockport solicitor Sandra Sinclair has advised a number of women who claim they gave up their babies for adoption under duress.
She says: "They are very emotive issues and a lot of the women affected have had their whole lives shaped by what happened to them.
"Whether it warrants a public inquiry depends on the scale of what happened but it is certainly of significant impact and has been the subject of controversy in recent years."
Like Basquill, Sinclair does not believe compensation is the motive behind calls for a public inquiry. "What has happened to many of these women, an offer of money would in no way compensate for what they have suffered."
As for the churches which ran the homes, she says many are unwilling to look into the matter because they now have a very different ethos and approach to adoption issues.
Basquill eventually traced her long-lost daughter almost 30 years later. She had been taken to Scotland where her adoptive mother hid the baby's Irish Catholic origins from her Protestant family by telling them her father was Jewish.
But Basquill says her daughter has struggled to come to terms with the truth about her past. They haven't met and have only spoken on the phone on three occasions.
The regrets remain. "I wish I had just cut and run with her from the start," Basquill says wistfully.